Interception of Communications Commissioner's 2011 Report - inspection statistics

Dear Sir or Madam,

The 2011 Interception of Communications Commissioner ("IoCC")'s report stated that only a subset of the 494,078 authorised requests to access communications data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 ("RIPA") was actually inspected. The size of this subset was not disclosed within the published report.

If the size of the subset was disclosed to the Prime Minister in the IoCC's detailed report to him, or disclosed later at the Prime Minister's request, please could you supply me with this information? If further detail about the subset - for example, a breakdown as to how many authorisations were inspected for each individual public authority - is available, please could you supply this in addition to the above?

I look forward to hearing from you - thank you for your help and your time.

Yours faithfully,

James Booth

Dear Prime Minister’s Office,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of the Prime Minister’s Office's handling of my FOI request 'Interception of Communications Commissioner's 2011 Report - inspection statistics'.

I am reluctant to accept that the disclosure of statistics relating to the scrutiny of communications data access under RIPA constitutes a threat to national security. Knowledge of the size of the sample examined by the Interception of Communications Commissioner is essential to determine the accuracy of his conclusions - with respect, I cannot see how disclosure of such information would be not be in the public interest, and am at a loss to understand how its publication would be a threat to national security.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

I look forward to receiving your response - thank you for your time.

Yours faithfully,

James Booth