Mr. David McGill:

On the search warrants and the cloud, it is related to the amount of data that is now contained in personal devices and electronic devices in general. In fact, an awful lot of data is stored in cloud storage, which means it does not actually reside on the devices themselves. The current powers under section 787 of the legislation allow us warrants to access these devices while we are on site. The proposed head 46 of the Bill will basically ameliorate these powers to give us the opportunity to balance our need to access these devices and access the information contained within them, with the impact that we are having on the people impacted by the search warrant.

For example, if we are entering a company or private residence we obviously want to minimise the amount of time that we are there because we understand that it is impacting on people's lives. We currently have provisions under section 788 for extended powers of search off site. The provision in head 46 extends that to allow us to do cloud searching off site as well so that we can secure the data as it is and conduct the sift off site in the same way we do with physical documents, but now with electronic documents.

What was alluded to in the submission made as part of this meeting was to consider extra powers outside of this. Currently, we apply for a warrant to search a premises and everything that stems from that is based on the warrant to search a premises. We envisage meeting potential future needs to apply for a warrant to search the cloud itself or to search an account which is the property of an individual or an entity. I hope that answers some of the Deputy's questions.