Council Snooping

Jack & Jacqui Jack: A word of warning re your cerebrally challenged snooping policies, PM says he's keeping an eye on you

The UK is not a surveillance society as some have said, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed. Smith conceded, though, that surveillance powers needed to be reviewed to cut back on excessive use.

The Information Commissioner and others have claimed that the unusually intensive use of closed circuit television cameras in the UK and the creation of children's, DNA and health databases have turned the UK into a surveillance society.

Smith said that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which defines to what degree citizens can be spied on by state agencies, had been abused. Much criticism has been attached to local authorities' use of powers under RIPA to spy on individuals suspected of trivial offences.

There are clearly cases where these powers should not be used, Smith conceded: I don't want to see them being used to target people for putting their bins out on the wrong day, for dog fouling offences, or to check whether paper boys are carrying sacks that are too heavy.

Smith announced a review of the use of the powers and said that better safeguards should be put in place by requiring the approval of more senior staff before powers are used, as well as some accountability to elected officials.

One question I will be asking of local authorities is whether the powers are authorised at a high enough level. Would it reinforce public confidence, and avoid frivolous use of the powers, if they could only be done with the consent of a senior executive, and subject to a form of oversight from elected councillors? she said.

The Home Office will conduct a review next year, proposing changes to RIPA related to which authorities can use it, increasing the level of authority needed to use RIPA powers and revising codes of practice in relation to the Act.

Town Hall Stasi are to be stripped of the power to spy on residents suspected of 'bin crimes' and dog fouling.

Rules unveiled by the Home Office will prevent councils from using the anti-terror Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act for trivial offences.

Launching a consultation on the future of RIPA, ahead of a final set of rules due later this year, the Home Office raises the prospect of Town Halls being stripped of the right to use the Act.

However, they may be allowed to continue using it for restricted offences. The new rules are also likely to see the power to make a RIPA authorisation passed to executive officers only, rather than low-ranking bureaucrats.

The local government minister, John Healy is writing to councils to say their future use of the powers must be proportionate.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith spewed the usual propaganda about the draft rules: Our country has a proud tradition of individual freedom. This involves freedom from unjustified interference by the State. But it also includes freedom from interference by those who would do us harm. The government is responsible for protecting both types of freedom.

Despite the proposed crackdown, councils are likely to fight to keep many of their powers. A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: Parliament clearly intended that councils should use powers under RIPA, and they are being used to respond to residents' complaints about serious criminals, like fly-tippers, rogue traders and people defrauding the benefits system.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'This consultation is a tacit admission by the Government that its surveillance society-has got out of hand. For too long, powers we were told would be used to fight terrorism and organised crime have been used to spy on people's kids, pets and bins: Without reform, RIPA will continue to be a snoopers' charter. Ministers must ensure that this consultation results in real changes and not just warm words.

Home Office Consultation: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Consolidating orders and codes of practice

See consultation from homeoffice.gov.uk
See also  consultation document [pdf]

Passed in 2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (called RIPA), created a regulatory framework to govern the way public authorities handle and conduct covert investigations.

This consultation takes a look at all the public agencies, offices and councils that can use investigation techniques covered by RIPA, and asks the public to consider whether or not it's appropriate for those people to be allowed to use those techniques.

In light of recent concerns, the government is particularly interested in how local authorities use RIPA to conduct investigations into local issues. Among other things, in order to ensure that RIPA powers are only used when they absolutely need to be, the government proposes to raise the rank of those in local authorities who are allowed to authorise use of RIPA techniques.

To respond to the consultation, reply by email to ripaconsultation@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

You can also reply by post to:

Tony Cooper
Home Office
Peel Building 5th Floor
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF

This consultation closes 10 July 2009.

The agency responsible for tracing absent parents is to be given access to phone and email records for the first time, under Home Office rules.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC), which has taken over the heavily criticised Child Support Agency, said the surveillance powers will allow it to find a hard core of 5,000 missing parents who are refusing to pay towards their children.

The move came as the Home Office announced plans to stop local authorities from using covert spying techniques for particularly trivial offences such as dog fouling or putting a bin out on the wrong day.

It is part of a review of the use of powers by public bodies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), which has town halls have been accused of abusing.

Investigators for the CMEC will now be given access to communications data stored by phone companies and internet service providers in cases where other methods of investigation have failed.

Such data shows who the target is speaking to on the phone, or contacting by emai. It will allow access to billing data showing an absent parent's address.

As well as tracking down those who have escaped detection, the powers will also be used on parents who do make some payments but are suspected of lying about their wealth.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: Only this Government could claim to be curtailing Ripa powers while extending them to a new body for the investigation of a different offence. Ministers cannot be trusted to govern the use of these intrusive powers, which is why their use should be authorised by magistrates.

Dylan Sharpe, campaign director of Big Brother Watch, said: Saying that these new extensions to RIPA will only target benefits cheats and parents that fail to pay child support is all well and good; but given recent experience most people will be waiting for cases that show the powers are being used for other, more nefarious reasons.

Ministers rejected suggestions that magistrates should authorise all uses of Ripa, arguing it could seriously impair investigations.

Watching over the Town of Poole?

A council in Dorset which spied on a family to see if they lived in the right school catchment area has lost a landmark ruling over its actions.

Jenny Paton took Poole Borough Council to a tribunal after it used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to spy on her family 21 times.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled it was not a proper purpose and not necessary to use surveillance powers.

It is the first time these powers have been challenged at an open hearing before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). The IPT also found that the surveillance breached the family's right to privacy under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

The council had argued that the covert surveillance, which took place between 10 February and 3 March 2008, was lawful under Ripa.

Paton only found out she had been under surveillance when it was revealed during a meeting with council officials to discuss their school application. They were tailed round the clock, spied on at home and their movements were recorded in detailed surveillance forms. Their car was also described as a target vehicle .

In a statement the council said: The council accepts fully the ruling of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and would like to apologise to Miss Paton and her family for any distress caused as a result of its actions in this case.

Corinna Ferguson, legal officer for Liberty, said: Intrusive surveillance is vital to fighting terrorism and serious crime but weak legal protections and petty abuses of power bring it into disrepute. Former ministers claimed that the innocent had nothing to fear but the sinister treatment of Jenny and her kids proves that these powers need to be far more tightly restricted and supervised.

Town halls will be banned from spying on the public over a few trivial crimes such as those associated with rubbish collection and school catchment area rules.

However the majority of minor offences which carry a maximum penalty of a jail term will continue to be subject to intrusive surveillance powers. Councils will have to first seek the formal approval of a magistrate before they are allowed to make use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

The only exception to the rule – which states an offence must carry a sentence of up to six months or more before RIPA can be applied – will be undercover operations for underage sales of alcohol and tobacco.

The coalition government promised to roll back the unnecessary, intrusive use of these powers, but unfortunately the reality has been very different.

Last year, public bodies made 552,550 requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to request access to confidential communications data. This is a 5% increase from 2009 and a 10% increase from 2008. Although the majority are from police and security services, 1,809 were made by local authorities, an increase from 1,756 requests last year.

Conservative MP Dominic Raab, who is a staunch supporter of civil liberties, said:

This disturbing data demonstrates the importance of the coalition's Freedom Bill, to reverse the legacy of Labour's surveillance society.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, has already revealed that surveillance technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that regulators are finding it almost impossible to deal with the changes. He claimed that recent changes had seen snooping techniques intensify and expand to the point where watchdogs do not fully understand the methods utilised under the act.

The Coalition proposal to require all local council use of the RIPA to be sanctioned by a magistrate is currently going through Parliament, but the increasing use of the powers highlights the necessity to enforce tight regulation on these intrusive measures which should only ever have been used to combat terrorism and serious crime as they were intended.

The latest Big Brother Watch report, A legacy of surveillance , looks at how the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has been used by both local and public authorities in recent years.

A decade on and more than three million authorisations later, Big Brother Watch research found how there is still a great deal of uncertainty about how and why the powers are being used -- and a clear need for the Coalition to go further to protect civil liberties.

While the Coalition has changed the law to require local authorities to seek a magistrates warrant for RIPA surveillance and only to use it for serious crimes, this is not the end of the matter.

The issue is of course that councils and public authorities don't have to say what they are up to, why, how often and even whether they have convicted anyone as a result. It takes groups like Big Brother Watch to dig up the figures -- the next step is for the Government to take action and make this data publicly reported.

Secondly, the Coalition has started down the right path in limiting how councils can use these powers. Now it's time for a full and frank review of how RIPA functions -- before the landscape is complicated even further with any more surveillance legislation that fiddles with the law in an effort to patch up existing failings.

Finally, judicial authorisation of surveillance should be the norm, not the exception.