The Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO), in its annual report published 30 October, said it is "very concerned" that British signals intelligence agency GCHQ cannot account for thousands of USB sticks, external hard drives, memory cards and other portable media, some of which may hold data obtained under the Investigatory Powers Act. Commissioner Sir Brian Leveson said GCHQ has "not yet established a sufficiently clear understanding of the scale, location and recoverability" of the items, and that the underlying issues had been raised years earlier; GCHQ estimates the losses in the thousands. The report does not allege any device reached adversaries, and GCHQ framed the issue as a record-keeping deficiency in its removable-media management system, saying it has since completed a full audit and updated its processes. IPCO also reported flawed intelligence selectors wrongly implicated innocent members of the public in "a small number of cases", leading to five counter-terrorism stops at ports where devices were downloaded and biometrics taken.

• Source article