The claimant sought judicial review of the granting of a special protection order with regard to the retention of emails sent by their customers, and for permission to destroy material relating to the application. The result, said the applicant, would overwhelm their storage systems, and to put them in breach of section 1 of the 2000 Act. ‘The question then arises whether the provisions of paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 provide the authority which is required in section 1(5)(c) of the RIP Act for NTL to take the action which that paragraph requires a person upon whom an application under section 9 of PACE to take.’
Held: The request was refused: ‘it is implicit in the terms of paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 of PACE that the body subject to an application under section 9 (here NTL) has the necessary power arising implicitly from the language of paragraph 11 of Schedule 1, read together with section 9, to take the action which they apparently have to take in order to conserve the communications by e-mail within the system until such time as the court decides whether or not to make an order. That being so, that implicit power provides the lawful authority for the purposes of section 1(5) and no offence will therefore be committed if NTL acts in accordance with paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 when served with an application under section 9. ‘
Lord Woolf CJ considered the effect of subsection 2(7) of the 2000 Act: ‘Sub-section (7) has the effect of extending the time of communication until the intended recipient has collected it. It is essential on the evidence in this case that if NTL are to preserve the material, they take action before the intended recipient has collected the e-mail. Sub-section (7) means that we are here concerned with what happens in the course of transmission.’
Judges:
The Lord Woolf of Barnes LCJ, Curtis J
Citations:
[2002] EWHC 1585 (Admin), [2003] QB 131, [2002] 3 WLR 1173
Links:
Statutes:
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 1 9
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Edmondson and Others v Regina CACD 28-Jun-2013
Course of Transmission includes Voicemails
The defendants appealed against convictions for conspiracy to intercept telephone voicemail messages whilst employed in various positions in newspapers. The issue boiled down to when the ‘course of transmission’ of a voicemail message ended, that is . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Police, Media
Updated: 04 June 2022; Ref: scu.539975