It is an excellent question, but I covered that in my pacy opening remarks because I was conscious that an important Statement was due to follow.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked whether paragraph 2.21 covers social media. As Minister James Brokenshire said at the Report stage of the then Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill:
“A communication can include any message sent over the internet. The legislation relates not to the retention of what the
message contained, but purely to the fact that a message was sent”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/1/15; col. 236.]
RIPA makes that clear and extends the machine-to-machine communications examples, such as the ones that were given.