Covert Authorities

Applications, authorisations, reviews and renewals under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, RIPA and the Police Act, with the audit trail that IPCO inspection expects, in three integrated modules on one platform.

The suite covers the three regimes a covert authorities bureau runs every day.

• Comms handles communications data under the Investigatory Powers Act, from the applicant’s request through the SPoC and the authorising officer to acquisition from the operators through Automated Acquisition.
• Covert holds the Source, Undercover and various Surveillance authorities (including prison surveillance and technical equipment interference) under RIPA and the Police Act, with reviews, renewals, cancellations and IPCO notifications on one record.
• TSU manages the technical surveillance unit’s equipment, jobs and product.

Each module is built for the people who use it. An applicant sees a form that needs no training. A SPoC or CAB officer sees the whole application and its history on one screen. An authorising officer records the decision against the application in front of them. A manager sees the state of every authority and every clock. Inspection is the same view: IPCO’s inspectors find the record complete, in order and unaltered.

All applications are secure, fully audited, and are delivered with a suite of audit and RPM compliant reports and workflows to support the business processes around record retention and destruction.

Because the three run on one platform, sanitised intelligence passes to external systems without exposing sources, handlers or controllers, and communications data acquired in Comms is available to the regional unit and, nationally, to every force on the system. All applications can then push into a common NIM compliant Intelligence solution for dissemination of intelligence via 3x5x2.