Investigatory Powers Act 2016 – New Powers

Investigatory Powers Act 2016 Amended to Give Greater Power To Investigating Authorities

The Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 25 April 2024.
The government has described the Act as:

‘New laws to protect our citizens from threats such as terrorism and child sexual abuse.’

Which will:

‘…ensure the intelligence services and law enforcement have the powers they need to keep pace with a range of evolving threats from terrorists, hostile state actors, child abusers and criminal gangs.’

The following changes come into effect immediately:

• Make changes to the bulk personal dataset regime, to improve the intelligence agencies’ ability to respond with greater agility and speed to existing and emerging threats to national security. They will improve the quality and speed of analysts’ decision making, improving their ability to keep the public safe in a digital age, whilst adhering to strong, proportionate safeguards and with independent oversight.
• Will enhance the existing safeguards to support the Investigatory Powers Commissioner in carrying out oversight of public authorities’ use of investigatory powers.
• Modify the notices regimes to ensure the efficacy of the existing powers in the context of new technologies and the commercial structures of a modern digital economy. This includes ensuring that exceptional lawful access is maintained where necessary and proportionate for public safety, while also protecting the privacy of citizens and the ability of companies to develop cutting-edge technologies.
• Increase the resilience of the warrant authorisation processes to allow greater operational agility for the intelligence agencies and National Crime Agency. This will help to ensure they can always get lawful access to information in a timely way so that they can respond to the most serious national security and organised crime threats.
• Update the conditions for use of Internet Connection Records to ensure that these can be used effectively to target the most serious types of criminal activity and national security threats without a corresponding increase in levels of intrusion, underpinned by a robust independent oversight regime.

Our criminal law team deals daily with allegations of serious crime and monitors all legislative developments to ensure we are entirely up to date with emerging police powers.

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