MI5 Collects Data About Wrong Phone Numbers Because of Formatting Error

Last year, the British Security Service (MI5) asked communications providers for subscriber data on 134 telephone numbers who weren't relevant to any investigation because of a spreadsheet formatting error.

The incident was disclosed in a report recently published by interception of communications commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.

The error caused the ending of all numbers in the spreadsheet to be changed to 000. The agency requested telecom providers for information about their owners.

"The subscriber data acquired had no connection or relevance to any investigation or operation being undertaken by the Security Service," wrote Kennedy in the report, according to Guardian Government Computing.

Once the error was spotted, the subscriber data was destroyed and requesting data from operators now requires a manual check in advance.

A different system configuration error led to the agency requesting history records for 927 IP addresses without the authorization of an officer with the rank of GD3 or higher, as required by regulations.

In this case the obtained data was actually necessary for investigative purposes, but the incorrect setting was addressed to prevent similar occurrences.

According to Kennedy's report, the number of requests for communications data increased by five percent in 2010 over the previous year and totaled 552,550.

Two-thirds of them were requests for subscriber information necessary to find the identity of a person using a phone number, while a quarter were for information related to traffic.

In a separate report, Sir Peter Gibson, the intelligence services commissioner, noted that there wasn't any "acquisition, storage and use made" of the National Identity Register by intelligence agencies before it was destroyed in February.

The national database established by the Identity Cards Act 2006 and included up to ten fingerprints, facial and iris scans, UK and overseas places of residence, and other data of citizens. The scheme was scrapped this year.