Privy Council Review of intercept as evidence: report - Official ...

CHAPTER VII - RELEVANCE OF EXPERIENCES OF OTHER COUNTRIES
124. One of the most regularly made arguments in favour of introducing
intercept as evidence, is that the UK is one of few countries that does not
allow the use of intercepted material as evidence; with the question being put;
“if other countries can use intercept as evidence safely, why can’t we?”
125. In order to understand whether there were any sound reasons for this
apparent anomaly, and to learn any lessons from other countries’ use of
intercept as evidence and their legal and operational regimes, we gathered
material from twelve different countries. We attempted to look beyond how
intercept as evidence was allowed for in principle, as set out in statute, to get
a sense of the value of intercept as evidence in practice and how they
managed the related risks and costs. In order to consider the issues faced by
the UK, being a common law jurisdiction which is also subject to the European
Convention on Human Rights, we examined a mixture of EU member state,
common law and other jurisdictions 5 .
126. For each of these countries, we considered:
Their assessment of the benefits, risks and costs of intercept as
evidence;
The relevance of each comparison to the UK; and
What each comparison indicated in terms of likely benefit, risk and
cost to the UK of introducing intercept as evidence.
127. We have outlined below our analysis of the use of intercept by seven of
these countries, namely: France; Republic of Ireland; Netherlands; Spain;
Australia; Canada; and United States. The use of intercept by the remaining
countries we received material from did not raise any substantial additional
issues.
EU COMPARISONS
France
128. The French employ a dual system of intercept, using judiciallyauthorised
interception for law enforcement purposes and administrativelyauthorised
interception for intelligence. The two systems use separate
personnel (except for translators) and separate technical systems. They are
careful to ensure that any public knowledge by targets of law enforcement
intercept does not compromise the use of separate intercept capabilities for
intelligence purposes.
129. They view judicial interception as essential for many investigations, in
particular to support conspiracy charges, drug and organised crime
investigations. A small number of judicial warrants are in force at any time.
5 Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Republic of
Ireland, Spain, Sweden, United States
Chapter VII
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