Section 9 of Police & Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) provides that "a constable may obtain access to special procedure material for the purposes of criminal investigation by making an application under Schedule 1 and in accordance with the Schedule". Section 9 has been successfully invoked in a rash of PACE applications this summer by police forces across the country. However, in a recent ruling following an application brought by the Suffolk Constabulary’s fraud squad against NTL, the respondent successfully argued that, due to the provisions of the recently enacted Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), it could not comply with the order being sought.
The fraud squad was investigating a multinational conspiracy to defraud, where the alleged conspirators were conducting their affairs almost entirely by e-mail. As a consequence, an order was sought to allow the police access to computer data held by NTL, which was the internet service provider. The difficulty for NTL was that it deleted all data over six hours old as a matter of practice but the PACE application imposed an obligation on it not to destroy or dispose of any stored data from the date the application was served.
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