As part of its work the Undercover Policing Inquiry has gathered numerous documents relating to undercover policing and its managers. Much of this material is considered to contain sensitive information, whether relating to personal details / protected characteristics of living individuals, details covered by anonymity orders, or other material considered sensitive as it relates to tactics or national security.
Before such documents can go to non-state witnesses with requests for witness statements (Rule 9 Requests) they are heavily redacted. A further round of redaction has to take place before the documents can be made public in the course of the evidential hearings.
This is a complex process which consumes a considerable amount of the Inquiry’s time. The extent to which this needs to be done, and the processes set up by the police and the Inquiry, have been challenged by non-state core participants, who have argued that the process is too cumbersome and protects the state core participants, particularly the police.
Some non-state core participants consider that the privacy of those targeted, including themselves, are being insufficiently respected (see also Procedural Hearing 15 on Restricted Reporting Orders). In particular, the Restriction Protocol was updated in light of the procedural hearing on Privacy and the application of the General Data Protection Regulation to the Inquiry’s work.
The Inquiry has heard various arguments regarding this and the process of the work of the Inquiry is set out in the Disclosure and Restriction Protocols. It has also set out the criteria on which redactions are made (‘Open Generic Grounds for Restriction’), as in theory (and some actual cases) core participants are able to request that specific redactions are lifted, which requires knowledge of the basis on which the redaction was applied.
Most of this work is opaque, being done by the police and Inquiry teams in private, with the public only seeing the final published work. Some exceptions are made for witnesses who often see a less redacted set of material where some personal details are included.