BBC News - 'Fresh proposals' planned over cyber-monitoring

[Roland Perry]

In article <519E8AF0.7060605 at liddicott.com>, Ben Liddicott 
<ben at liddicott.com> writes
>So the reality is if you have an emergency, you have two officers on 
>the phone:
>
>Officer 1 gets on to the ISP and says "I need some info urgently, court 
>order is on it's way. Can you look it up and have it ready to give as 
>soon as the order comes through?" The chap at the ISP does so, looks up 
>the info and has it ready.
>Officer 2 gets on to the Judge and says " I need a court order for 
>this...".  As soon as the order is given, the word is passed to officer 
>1 along with (presumably) some reference number. ISP chap hands over 
>info.
>
>This happens in parallel, and in reality the court order plus request 
>takes barely longer than the request alone.
>
>If that's the case, what is the real reason these new abilities are 
>being asked for?

What "new abilities" are these? [1]

The system which was decided upon (and known as RIPA) isn't that much 
different from the above, and involves verbal authorisations, followed 
by paperwork as soon as you get a Superintendent out of bed.

A question for the lawyers here: In practice, can someone in the force 
control room really ring up a judge themselves (no other intermediaries) 
in the middle of the night? What sort of standard of proof would the 
judge want that the request was genuine and necessary?

[1] The BBC is talking about new forms of data being logged
    (specifically de-anonymising carrier grade NAT), not new routes to
     obtain disclosure.

     It seems to me unrealistic to expect BT's broadband customers, who
     are about to be stuck behind CGNAT, to become untraceable overnight;
     and while BT could log the mappings on their own accord I suspect
     they want a change in the law (or at least some kind of official
     'notice') to give regulatory certainty and to keep their
     shareholders happy that they aren't spending money unnecessarily.
-- 
Roland Perry