Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Delaney
The problem is that if a prosecution depended on it the police would have to show that all the evidence had been collected in accordance with all the relevant legislation or else risk a clever defence lawyer convincing a judge that it should be ruled as inadmissible.
This has happened on several occasions were the police prosecution case has relied on evidence collected from mobile phone wire taps carried out without a warrant and so deemed illegal.
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Yes, but not all cases, and the gathering of certain data, i.e IP log history only goes to bolster a police investigation, and may not be used as evidence.
E.g. Under the new law, the police can go to the courts to request a warrant (or enforce RIPA if this new legislation allows it) to enter a premises and extract computer equipment where they have reason to suspect that the owner may potentially be a paedophile based on what URL's have been recorded against his Internet account in the last year. Now, having recorded URL's may not be evidence, but extracting that evidence under new legislation will be easy, and will provide the needed evidence for a warrant to be issued so that the claim can be investigated further, such as through forensic examination of any computer equipment in that property.
My point is this, up until now, the police could request from an ISP who owned an IP address at a particular time in the past, or currently and they wouldn't need a court order. The new legislation coming into force would require our ISP to record basic internet activity, such as sites visited for a rolling 12 month period, and the police could request that information also, without the need for an interception request, also available under RIPA, and does not need a judge to sign it off. Whether this new legislation can be administered through RIPA as it stands is yet to be seen.