Dear Sir or Madam,

Please forward to me the list of PC terminals at Cotton House,
Glasgow, which are connected to the internet.

This should be in whatever format is used internally by HMRC to
identify individual terminals, in order that an individual terminal
could be selected from the list.

Yours faithfully,

Ms Anne Thrope

Dear Ms Thrope

Please see the attached response to your request dated 17 October.

Eileen Tully | IMS Strategic Communications | 020 8544 2717

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Tully, Eileen (IMS),

Many thanks for your response.

To which log files are you referring? My request made no mention of
any log files.

Yours sincerely,

Ms Anne Thrope

Dear Ms Thrope,

Thank you for your question dated 19 June.

On 17 October 2008, under the FOI Act - reference FOI 2110/08, you
requested:

"Please forward to me the list of PC terminals at Cotton House, Glasgow,
which are connected to the internet.
This should be in whatever format is used internally by HMRC to identify
individual terminals, in order that an individual terminal could be
selected from the list."

An applicant's right in section 1 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)
is to be informed if a public authority holds the information described in
the request and, if that is the case, to have it communicated subject of
course to other provisions of the Act such as costs and exemptions.

I responded as follow:

"Rather than make such a wide ranging request it would be better if you
described more fully the sort of information you are hoping to find on the
logs; which will enable us to focus our search so that we can comply with
your request.

By way of background, all HMRC network connected desktop devices have the
capability to access the internet, but the authority to access the
internet is attached to an individual user's profile; therefore, one
person may have the authority to use the internet, while another who may
log on to the same device, does not, because the authority to access the
web is given at the user level not the device level.

If we gave you the address of one terminal it may be possible, within the
fees limit allowed by the Act, to look at that individual terminal to
ascertain who used it and then interrogate it to see what each user had
looked at but it is by no means certain that we would be able to pass on
all the details to you. For example if access related to work in
connection with identifiable customers or research in anticipation of
enquiry work it may be covered by exemptions in the Act. But it is
equally possible that, if no one who has internet access allocated as part
of their profile had used the machine, there would be no record of any
access. ... ... ..."

In this instance a log file is; a file where information is
logged/recorded. On most computers and in most applications there will be
log file(s) that store information (events) that's pertinent to its
related device/application. This information can range from logon/user
activity to error reporting.

When considering internet activity on individual computers one could use
the event logs on the computer to see which users have been accessing the
internet browser, but it would more likely look at the internet history
files for each of the users that have used that particular computer.

I hope you find this reply helpful.

Yours sincerely

Eileen Tully | IMS Strategic Communications | 020 8544 2717

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