ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the ways in which terrorist groups and individual terrorists use communicational technology in the digital age. It highlights terrorist exploitation of legitimate technological growth, resulting in a potential unquantifiable threat to United Kingdom national security. The chapter provides an overview of Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA), focusing on the bulk powers testing whether the powers fit with human rights norms. The UK’s passage of the IPA, and other legal efforts to combat terrorist use of digital technology, conforms to human rights law. The IPA brings the powers together into one, nine-part statute, which provides twenty-first century structural support to the Regulation and Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). The UK government has also introduced a form of judicial scrutiny and wider safeguards to protect personal data and privacy rights, and removed certain powers to obtain communications data previously authorised under RIPA.
