Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) was designed to fight serious crime. But officials have been using it to spy on suspected dog fouling, littering and other minor offences.
The government has promised curbs on its use but the Lib Dems warn it could still become a “snoopers’ charter”.
- BBC News
11 Comments
Is that a Banksy I see before me? Wo’ a geezah.
Gentlemen we can build Oceania. We have the technology.
Interesting legal question: Are the constitutional and structural protections enshrined way before TV now adequate to stop Big Brother watching us?
And does it matter when the culture is so brain dead that we can’t stop it watching Big Brother?
I’m not convinced this matter is confined to “big brother” cameras, albeit cameras are a handy-dandy form of surveillance.
Aren’t councils in England also putting protocols and processes in place to examine people’s garbage and decline to collect rubbish if it doesn’t live up to proscribed recycling standards?
The minor transgressions – dog poop, littering – for which cameras are being used is very much about surveillance – in this case literal – and control, monitoring and enforcement of every day social behaviors.
Should councils have the right to snoop through people’s garbage? A right to enforce recycling habits? Most people will probably support these actions. Yet, there’s an ideological basis for the way we’re heading, no matter how neatly anyone wants to wrap it up in environmental or social concerns. The intrusion of the state into private lives, into the once sacrosanct private space, continues unchecked and almost unnoticed.
R.I.P.A. is a seperate issue to CCTV cameras. It gives power to an absurdly wide range of public bodies to access people’s bank accounts, email accounts and phone records and stage surveillance ‘ops’ (ie. blokes in a car/s following you around with a camera private-detective style) without having to apply to a magistrate to justify it. Can’t remember if the phone tapping at will made it through to the final legislation but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Supposedly these should only be used to support prosecutions for things like industrial fly-tipping and benefit fraud [yes that's right, your civil rights in Britain vary depending on the source of your income] but Poole council was busted following families around with cameras to check whether they really lived within the catchment area of the school they had applied to.
I am always stunned when watching The Bill at how many and accessible CCTVs are in Britian. It’s like the whole country is forced into a Reality TV program.
You would think their Human Rights Act wold have seen them taken down by now.
John – no different than in Oz.
If a person here lives in an apartment block they can potentially be tracked through their entire day from when they leave their building, all the way through traveling to work, being at work, going shopping , going out, then traveling and arriving home again. There’s not a lot that’s not being captured on a camera.
Yikes. Best confine my nose picking indoors from now on!
Actually,harking back to a former post, that’s part of the way in which they caught out Marcus Einfeld – his car was filmed on various CCTVs (toll bridge camera etc). Whereas it was evident from the CCTV of his mother’s car that it did not leave her garage the whole weekend in question.
P.S. I LOVE Banksy’s work.
Yes Banksy rocks my socks. I was looking through a book of Banksy’s artworks the other week and there were occasional comments from the man himself. One i enjoyed pointed out that a lot of police headwear have a brim that comes down to partially obscure the eyes so that is it harder for everyone else to make eye contact with them. He points out that this means the field of vision for police is restricted in terms of height, one of the facts he considers when choosing where to place his art.
Though given the size of that particular piece (over three stories high), it would be a little hard to miss… and unfortunately has since been painted over by Westminster Council.
Gah, what spoilsports the Council are!