What happens when police examine a seized phone

This page covers the legal side: what the authorities this site has sourced say about obtaining information from a phone the police have already seized. For what a full extraction contains, device by device, see what a full extraction contains.

The Equipment Interference Code of Practice gives an example. A law enforcement officer interferes with equipment to obtain information stored in electronic form on that equipment, as relevant evidence in a criminal investigation, under their powers of seizure arising from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The Code says: “The officer’s conduct is authorised by the 1984 Act and no equipment interference warrant is therefore required.”

That example is about an equipment interference warrant. This site has not sourced a statement about what other authorisation, if any, applies to examining the data on a seized phone.

Section 42(1) of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 says the Secretary of State must prepare a code of practice containing guidance about the exercise of the powers in sections 37(1) and 41(1). The Code itself says it “only applies as regards the powers in Chapter 3 of Part 2 of the Act” and that “If another power is being used as the basis for extracting information from an electronic device, the guidance/code for that power will apply.” The voluntary pathway under section 37(1) is covered separately.

The Information Commissioner’s Office looked at how forces across England and Wales were using extraction and found that “police data extraction practices vary across the country, with excessive amounts of personal data often being extracted, stored, and made available to others, without an appropriate basis in existing data protection law.” Read the ICO’s 2020 report.

Its Recommendation 1 says: “The Government should strengthen the current legislative framework by producing a statutory code or other equivalent measure to ensure the law is sufficiently clear and foreseeable.” That is a recommendation rather than a rule, so it is not listed as a duty item below.