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London's police asked Big Tech for private communications data over 700,000 times last year
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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As always, a misleading story.
You're minding your own business.
A stalker starts sending you threatening emails and messages saying they're going to hunt you down and rape you.
You have no idea who it is, tried blocking them so they create a new account/buy a new ohone.
You report it to the police.
Police request communications data from the email provider to obtain an IP address. Also provides information that was given when the account was created, any geo-tagged data, any information about linked accounts that are used for 2fa/recovery.
They then request subscriber data from the ISP linked to the IP address, as well as things like the MAC to make sure they capture information about the device being used.
Now police have enough evidence to obtain a warrant to search the home address of the sender. They can seize the device (forensically linked earlier) and arrest the suspect for questioning.
This is exactly the process I followed many years ago. It kept an innocent woman safe and resulted in a potentially dangerous sex offender being arrested and dealt with.
Wow, roughly 2000 cases like that a day!
The case you cite is a moral one, I doubt most are.
The ability for police to request information is not controversial for crimes and online threats, given independant oversight, ideally a judge auhorizing a warrant.
What's controversial is the scale, which suggest this police power may be abused and/or used disproportionately.
A judge issuing a warrant just for the police to try and identify a suspect isn't feasible or proportionate. Same logic would apply to requesting CCTV etc.
It would grind everything to a halt.
Where the warrant comes in is if you need to search a house and seize things.
As for the scale, I agree it does seem high. But like I said in another post, there isnt a cop in the land who has the time and inclination to put in subscriber requests just for the fun of it. The majority of those 700k requests will be on the back of a formal complaint/allegation of a crime.
A warrant is absolutely proportional for accessing private communications or searching private devices.
Privacy is a human right. It must be protected even if it's not absolute. Having a judge approve the equivalent of a wiretap is the right thing to do.
Abuse of surveillance power and disproportionate breach of privacy would certainly grind to a halt. It's worth bothering a judge to wiretap suspects of serious crime when there's probable cause, but not for minor offenses nor to harrass activists. I doubt all those 700k request are for serious crime suspects with probable cause.
I agree.
Requesting communications data from an ISP isn't any of those things though.
What do you mean? It's not (like) a wiretap? Not about serious crime? Not an abuse of police power? None of the above?
To help understand, it might be useful to know that the basic principle in the UK is that communications networks are considered to be a public utility. Anything you do on that network is considered to be a public communication. Now the detail of what you're actually doing is hidden becaise of encryption. But your identity is not. Also, this most definitely isn't the same as wire tapping. In the UK that does require a warrant
Its the same principle as if you call or text people. Your phone number,like your IP is owned by the service provider.
Finding out who the IP is registered to is no different than asking a mobile company who the number belongs to.
Same as your car number plate.
Looking up an identifier to see who it is linked to isn't an abuse of process
Thanks for the background, I'm not familiar with UK's regulation on telcos.
I stand corrected, this isn't like wiretap as the article mention Communication Data (CD) is metadata rather than content. It's still very intrusive as it show who is talking to who, when, and possibily where (location is metadata).
It make sense to make access to metadata a bit easier than metadata+content. The scale is still surprising, what kind of crime is London police investigating at a rate of 700k (or even 100k) a year ? It still beaches privacy so it should be proportional.
I agree, 700k is suspiciously high but without additional information its hard to say what is driving it. Unless each separate component of a request is considered to be a separate request. But who knows
Apparently not the public. Lack of transparency makes it hard for citizens and lawmakers to make informed policy decisions.
I agree
Okay great. Does London have 700000 cyber-criminals?
Except you can just change your IP and MAC, so now anything the police wants to see is linked to whatever crime gives them the most leeway.
You can change your IP/Mac.
Most people cant. I work with people. Most of them can't even save a word document as a PDF. I had to deal with a very senior person today who redacted a document by highlighting the text and changed the background colour.
I have others who dont know how to share files on onedrive or password protect zip files. So whilst people on lemmy who, like Redditors skew towards being younger, male and computer savvy, the general population aren't
Most people when signing up to an email address don't do that straight away, or they inadvertently log in using their real one at some point. I'd scan a user log and just make a request for the subscriber data for all the IP addresses
As for the first bit? No idea, I'm not from London. But 700,000 requests potentially represent 700,000 complaints from people about alleged criminal activity. Might be less, might be more. But I can tell you now, no cop in the land has the time or inclination to start searching for this stuff unless its a crime thats been reported to them.
And I'm guessing from your tone you obviously dont agree with any of it. Which begs the question, if you become a victim how would you feel if the police simply responded "yeah we don't know whos doing it and we aren't gonna bother trying to find out, good luck"?
What does it matter what real people can or can't do? The article and topic is about police abusing innocent people by spying on them. The fact that they aren't able to do the things you're justifying them getting accused of only makes it worse, to the degree it's relevant at all.
The total number of offences in London for 2024 was 951803. Do you find it reasonable if 70% of those have an anonymous online component to them that is still clearly linked to the same crime?
What about the 106 times they did it to "specifically identify journalists’ sources"? Did someone make a report for each of the 93527 LycaMobile users, which the article pretty convincingly suggests were targeted because they're largely migrant workers?
Even if it was all legitimate, why does police need the power to search people's communication without evidence? Why don't they need warrants for communications data? Why don't "intelligence and security spies" need warrants for communications content? Why are they allowed to do cavity searches for communication equipment without evidence of a crime?
You're loading the question with the assumption that no investigation can be done without reading the communications of 700000 Londoners, and that the rights of innocents should be at my discretion if I've been victimised in any way.