2021/24662 - Social media provider requests
REQUEST
- How many times has the force made a request to access a user’s data on a social media platform for the calendar years 2019, 2020 and 2021 to the present date (9/11/2021)?
Please provide a breakdown by:
- i) Year
- ii) To which social media company the request was made
iii) Details of the crime for which the request was made, as you record it in any database relating to this request e.g. by Home Office code or descriptive category e.g. sexual offences, child abuse, etc.
- iv) The outcome
For example, this information could be presented in a table as follows:
Year Social media company Type of crime Outcome
2019 Facebook Code 4/7 OR harm to child Rejected
- Please could you provide a copy of the guidance or policy issued to police officers as to what data they are able to request from social media companies and when this power can be used.
Please note: by “data”, I refer to - but not limited to - anything from details of the subscriber to a particular account; to content of any messages/photos/social media posts etc, to IP Login history and geolocation (the geographical location of an object, such as a mobile phone). For more guidance on this and common social media platforms for which police may request data (Facebook/Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube). Please see the definition provided by the CPS for guidance. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/social-media-reasonable-lines-enquiry.
Requests for information by social media companies may be referred to as mutual legal assistance requests. If you record your mutual legal assistance requests in a central database, please could you provide a list of the names of the fields.
I fully appreciate issues under s40 relating to personal data protection, however, blanket redaction is not permitted under FOIA. you must redact personal information and provide the rest.
RESPONSE
Unfortunately, we cannot answer this request as it will exceed the 18-hour time limit to complete a request. Gwent Police get an average of 400 requests per year. In order to retrieve the data, each record would need to be reviewed. It would take approximately five minutes to review each individual record for the last three years, which would equate to 100 hours of research. Therefore, a Section 12 Excess Cost exemption has been applied.
Section 12 – Excess Cost
The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.
Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”
In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e. 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.