The RIP (Maintenance of Interception Capability) Order 2002 only
applies to companies that intend to provide a public
telecommunications service, such as mobile phone operators and
ISPs, to more than 10,000 persons in the UK.
Under the Order, the Secretary of State can give a notice to
such service providers, requiring them to maintain an interception
capability. The service providers will be given a 28-day period to
seek assistance from the Technical Advisory Board, a body provided
for by the RIP Act.
According to the new rules, a service provider may been informed
that the interception of an individual or a business has been
authorised.
The provider then has one working day for implementing
interceptions of “all communications and related data authorised by
the interception warrant” and to ensure their simultaneous (i.e. in
real time) transmission to a hand-over point within the service
providers’ network as agreed with the person on whose application
the interception warrant was issued.
Service providers will also have to ensure that they have
“filtering to provide only the traffic data associated with the
warranted telecommunications identifier”, and that their system can
cope with the simultaneous interception of the communications of up
to 1 in 10,000 users.
