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.