Digital Devices (1891/20)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act, could you please tell me:
1. How many of the following types of devices you have seized in the 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 calendar years:
* Mobile phones
* Desktop computers
* Laptop computers
* Tablets
* External hard drives or storage devices
* Other digital devices
(or if you do not break down devices into these categories please specify your own)
2. How many of the following types of devices have been subject to data extraction or some other kind of digital forensic investigation in the 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 calendar years:
* Mobile phones
* Desktop computers
* Laptop computers
* Tablets
* External hard drives or storage devices
* Other digital devices
(or if you do not break down devices into these categories please specify your own)
3. The purpose of the data extraction or digital forensic investigation – ie. if it was related to a particular type of crime. Please specify this as a number: ie. how many investigations were for one type of crime and how many for another type.
4. Please confirm how much has been spent on specialist hardware and software to facilitate digital forensic investigation activities in each calendar year. Please break this expenditure down by supplier / product.
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not all held in a readily retrievable or centrally recorded format. We are unable to break the requested information down into further categories e.g. the crime types associated to each device examination and the software breakdown without manually reviewing each examination case. However, to manually review this information would exceed the appropriate limit (S.12 FOIA).
Therefore, the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and have provided the information requested for the remainder of this request. Please find this attached (1891_Attachment).
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.