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Planning Investigations and Legal Background for Tough Interviews 159

Communications interception
Communications transmissions

Section 1 of Part 1, Chapter 1 makes it a criminal offence – punishable by an unlimited fine
and up to 2 years imprisonment – for any person intentionally and without lawful authority
to intercept a ‘communications transmission’ on a private or public network. Section 1(3)
creates a separate civil liability for interception of communications transmissions without
lawful authority.

Definitions
A private communications system is defined as:

any telecommunication system which, without itself being a public telecommunication system,
is a system in relation to which the following conditions are satisfied:

(a) it is attached, directly or indirectly and whether or not for the purposes of the com-
munication in question, to a public telecommunication system; and

(b) there is apparatus comprised in the system which is both located in the United King-
dom and used (with or without other apparatus) for making the attachment to the
public telecommunication system;

Some lawyers have made the point that the word ‘attached’ is pivotal and thus argue that
‘internal loops’ or ‘internal extensions’ as well as ‘radio extensions’ are not part of the private
system because they are not ‘attached’. This is probably an unsustainable argument.

However, an ‘entirely self-standing system’ (such as an intranet) is not to be regarded as
a ‘private communications system’. The safe line for businesses is to work on the basis that
any voice or data communications system is covered by the Act and regulations made there-
under.

The definitions of ‘public telecommunications service’, ‘public telecommunications sys-
tem’, ‘telecommunications service’ and ‘telecommunications system’ are wonderfully owlish
but mean what they say. They are communications systems provided to a substantial section
of the public, such as that provided by British Telecom.

Section 2(2) states:

a person intercepts a communication in the course of its transmission by means of a telecom-
munications system if, and only if, he:

(a) so modifies or interferes with the system or its operation
(b) so monitors transmissions made by means of the system
(c) so monitors transmissions made by wireless telegraphy to or from an apparatus

comprised in the system

as to make some or all of the contents of the communication available, while being transmitted,
to a person other than the sender or intended recipient of the communication.