The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (also known as DRIP or DRIPA) was an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

, repealed in 2016. It received

Royal Assent Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in other ...

on 17 July 2014, after being introduced on 14 July 2014. The purpose of the legislation was to allow security services to continue to have access to phone and internet records of individuals following a previous repeal of these rights by the

Court of Justice of the European Union The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) (french: Cour de justice de l'Union européenne or "''CJUE''"; Latin: Curia) is the Judiciary, judicial branch of the European Union (EU). Seated in the Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg quart ...

. The act was criticised by some

Members of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for the speed at which the act was passed through parliament, by some groups (such as the

Open Rights Group The Open Rights Group (ORG) is a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms by campaigning on digital rights issues and by fostering a community of grassroots activists. It campaigns on numerous issues including ma ...

and

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

) as being an infringement of privacy. Following legal action, in July 2015, the

High Court of Justice The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Courts of England and Wales, Senior Cou ...

issued an order that sections 1 and 2 of the Act were unlawful, and to be disapplied, suspended until 31 March 2016, thereby giving the government a deadline to come up with alternative legislation which would be compatible with EU law. an investigatory powers parliamentary bill was being drafted providing new surveillance powers, requiring records to be kept by Internet Service Providers tracking use of the internet from the UK, accessible by the police and security services without judicial oversight. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 was repealed on 31 December 2016 and replaced by the

Investigatory Powers Act 2016 The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (c. 25) (nicknamed the Snoopers' Charter) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which received royal assent on 29 November 2016. Its different parts came into force on various dates from 30 December 2 ...

Revocation

On 1 August 2014, the

Data Retention Regulations 2014 In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

came into force, completing the framework introduced by the DRIP. They provide that a communications service provider can be required to retain data only when target of a notice of the Secretary of State. In December 2014, in ''R (on the application of David Davis MP and Tom Watson MP) v Secretary of State for the Home Department'', Mr Justice Lewis (High Court) granted the Claimants permission to proceed to a substantive hearing, thus agreeing that the DRIP can be challenged by judicial review. As a reaction, the Government proposed using the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill (CTSB) to extend their remit to cover data generated as a result of internet communications. On 4 June 2015 a legal challenge against the law was brought to the High Court by two MPs,

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

's Tom Watson and the

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

David Davis represented by the civil liberties organisation

. They claimed that the act was rushed through parliament and was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the

European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) enshrines certain political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law. It was drafted by the European Convention and solemnly proclaim ...

. On 17 July 2015 the High Court upheld the challenge, finding sections 1 and 2 of the Act to be unlawful. The court found that the section 1 of the Act was contrary to EU law as a result of breaches of the

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) enshrines certain political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law. It was drafted by the European Convention and solemnly proclai ...

by virtue of the rights under Article 7 to a "private and family life, home and communications" and under article 8 which provides rights of the data held on an individual. The court found that these rights were breached based on the conclusions reached i
Digital Rights Ireland Ltd v Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and others
and the conjoined case of Kärntner Landesregierung. The court issued an order that sections 1 and 2 be disapplied, suspended until 31 March 2016, thereby giving the government a deadline to come up with alternative legislation which is compatible with EU law. In October 2015, the

Court of Appeal A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of t ...

began hearing the Home Secretary's appeal against the ruling. The Court of Appeal accepted, on a provisional basis, the arguments put forward by the Home Secretary and decided to refer certain aspects of the judgement to the

for a

preliminary ruling A preliminary ruling is a decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the interpretation of European Union law that is given in response to a request (preliminary reference) from a court or a tribunal of a member state. A preliminary rulin ...

. In particular, the Court of Appeal found that the Digital Rights Ireland case did not result in mandatory requirements applicable to all Member States' data retention regimes. The Court of Appeal referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union as to whether the Digital Rights Ireland case should law down mandatory requirements for the national legislation of member states and whether this resulted in an expansion of the effects of Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter beyond the effect of

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic ...

. On 21 December 2016 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in joined cases that the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 was unlawful. The court found on the first question referred by the Court of Appeal that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union does preclude legislation which provides for access to retained traffic and location data by certain national authorities where this is not restricted to fighting serious crime or where the right to access is not subject to a prior court review. The ECJ found that the second question referred by the Court of Appeal was inadmissible. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) was repealed on 31 December 2016 and replaced by the

. Following the EU judgement (and after the repeal of the act) the matters was again referred to the Court of Appeal. In this judgement the Court of Appeal granted declaratory relief in respect of the areas in which it was found that the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 was incompatible with EU law. The relief was limited to the context that making use of data collected under the act in prosecuting crimes was only admissible where it had been restricted to fighting serious crime or access had been subject to court review.

Overview

The main provisions of the act were: *To allow the security services through the Secretary of State to retain the powers to require a public

telecommunications operator A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunica ...

to retain communications data in line with the purposes of the

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 ( c.23) (RIP or RIPA) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, regulating the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillance and investigation, and covering the interception of comm ...

.Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 - Section 1 *The creation of a new privacy and civil liberties board to act as an independent watchdog overseeing the security services' use of these powers. *To enforce the annual publication of a report of the amount of data intercepted under the regulations *To restrict the length of time such data can be held to 12 months *To ensure that the relevance of the

is reviewed biennially *To reduce the number of public bodies that can access the data collected under the legislation *To limit the data which can be accessed under the regulations to only data that is relevant *To provide for fresh legislation to supersede this legislation in 2016 *To ensure that such data can no longer be gathered solely for the interest of the UK economic wellbeing *To appoint a diplomat to negotiate data transfers of such information with the United States.

References

{{UK legislation United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2014 United Kingdom privacy law Data laws of the United Kingdom

Revocation

Overview

See also

References