262 • INTERCEPTION OF COMMUNICATIONS
‘‘political party’’ or ‘‘serious crime.’’ McColl later described this ex-
ercise as writing his own job description, and the inclusion of a re-
sponsibility to protect the ‘‘economic well-being of the United
Kingdom’’ went unchallenged, just as it had done when it was origi-
nally inserted in the Security Service Bill in 1989. SIS would be free
to apply for telephone and mail intercept warrants in the United
Kingdom, throughMI5’s well-established procedures, and was given
an immunity from any civil or criminal liability within the United
Kingdom for acts committed outside the jurisdiction.INTERCEPTION OF COMMUNICATIONS.Prior to the passage of
the Interception of Communications Act (1985), authority for the in-
terception of mail and telephone calls was supplied by six cabinet
ministers: the secretaries of state for home affairs, foreign affairs,
Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and trade and industry. Each re-
quest was prepared by the relevant organization (MI5, theSecret In-
telligence Service, Customs and Excise, or the police) and submitted
to the appropriate minister, who signed a warrant authorizing the in-
terception for a period of six months, under the general authority of
theroyal prerogative. The warrant would then be delivered to the
General Post Office, which would make the necessary technical ar-
rangements for interception. The number of individual warrants is-
sued was published (although it was not a particularly accurate guide,
as a single warrant, in the case of an organization, might cover nu-
merous telephone lines), and after 1985 an independent commis-
sioner was appointed to supervise the procedure and investigate
complaints.
The current criteria for granting a warrant, as set out in the 1985
act, are that the required information cannot be obtained from any
other source and that the offenses under investigation have a penalty
of more than six months’ imprisonment on the first offense. Informa-
tion gleaned from the source is not admissible as evidence in a crimi-
nal trial. In the case of telephone warrants, the interception is
arranged at the exchange, and the transcripts are prepared by the rele-
vant agency.
INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE.The military unit created to fight for
the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, and a source of