Listening to Criminals
In this episode, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC examine the powerful arguments for using telephone intercept evidence in UK criminal trials. Why are the security services so opposed to a reform that would obviously give a major boost to convicting terrorists and serious criminals, and why have successive governments failed to overcome this opposition? For context, Ken and Tim look at the 2020 joint French/Dutch police operation which led to the demise of EncroChat (the so-called “WhatsApp for professional criminals”) and the many successful prosecutions that followed in the UK and across Europe, as courts listened to criminals planning their crimes in real time. Virtually every other fair trial country relies heavily on intercept evidence to fight terrorism and organised crime. Why does the UK continue to stand against it?