Surveillance Powers in the UK need to be Questioned
The BBC is reporting on the abuse of surveillance powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000:
Councils in England have been urged to review the way they use surveillance powers to investigate suspected crime.
Under laws brought in to help fight terrorism, councils can access phone and e-mail records and use surveillance to detect or stop a criminal offence.
Remember that. “Laws brought in to help fight terrorism“. Sir Simon Milton of the Local Government Association has written to Councils:
Sir Simon said
I love that … but was it “Sir Simon says do this” or “Sir Simon says do that“?
“Parliament clearly intended that councils should use the new powers, and generally they are being used to respond to residents’ complaints about fly tippers, rogue traders and those defrauding the council tax or housing benefit system.”
Remember … Terrorism … such as …
a family in Dorset followed for several weeks to see if they really did live in a school catchment area.
OK. Threat to the wellbeing of the nation by family living the wrong side of a line on a map. Fair enough. Presumably could cause an atom bomb in Bridport.
examining rubbish to monitor what households are throwing away
Yep. I see. Clearly people threatening to assassinate the Queen.
filming dog-walkers suspected of letting their pets foul public spaces
That would be one down from placing a bomb on a nuclear submarine. “Fleet carrier flattened by Fido” - that kind of thing. OK.
Sir Simon specifically identifies dog fouling and littering as examples of two offences in which the RIP Act’s powers were not “necessary and proportionate“.
Hallelu-Jah! So how serious is the problem:
Figures released by councils under the Freedom of Information Act show that thousands of people have had their telephone and e-mail records accessed.
It is estimated that about 3,000 people have been targeted in the last year, for alleged offences that included dog smuggling, storing petrol without permission and keeping unburied animal carcasses.
A sample of fewer than 10% of councils showed that spying techniques were used 1,343 times.
10% of Councils. 1343 occasions. Ouch.
Sir Simon Milton has written to councils warning overzealous use of the powers could alienate the public.
Could be alienating the public? Might that be irony?
Ye Gods…
Shami Chakrobarti - as usual these days - gets it about right:
Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: “We just hope that central government now follows the Local Government Association lead and really gets a grip on a law that needs to be updated, a law that is ripe for abuse and in particular, a law that doesn’t have an important enough role for judges in authorising this kind of intrusive surveillance.”
This illustrates the problem. We have far too many Big Brother type powers that can be used far too widely. This is a result of badly drawn, unfocused, open-ended legislation - without limitation, and without checks and balances.
Councils are just the tip of the iceberg. It is a culture that needs overturning.
Right, so who’s going to put taming this tangled thicket of retrograde legal undergrowth in their manifesto for the next Election?
[tags]Big Brother, Council surveillance powers, regulation of investigatory powers, ripa[/tags]
Categories: All WW, Campaigns, Comment, Human Rights / Freedom, News - Current Affairs, Politics
Frankly it’s just rubbish to say that they were “intended to fight terrorism”. I was on my local council when RIPA came in and it was quite clear that when it was extended to local authorities it was in order that they could use it operationally to investigate local issues. I tried to get my authority to adopt a protocol that would at least force officers to consult with elected members in some guise - executive board or some kind of urgency committee - before exercising the powers, and although that did not succeed I recently did an FoI request and hat authority has not used the powers at all.
None of this is to say that I think the powers are a good thing - hence the attempt to ensure democratic scrutiny of the sort of issues it would be used for - but it is a red herring that keeps being repeated that councils are “using powers intended to fight terrorism”…blah blah blah. The original RIPA may well have sprung from a desre to give police and intelligence agencies better access to surveillance type information in respect of terrorist investigations, but when in its second tranche the powers were extended to all sorts of statutory authorities it was quite clear that it was moving beyond terrorism. Nobody should now be shocked that the powers are being used for more petty issues.
@Jock:
The powers in RIPA 2001 were headlined (in the long title of the Act) identified:
“the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Headquarters; and for connected purposes.”
I think that clearly implies (or is intended to imply) terrorism and serious crime, so I’ll make that a separate article.
I’m going to need to dig into the exact legislative process to comment on the extension of powers to Local Councils before I comment in detail, but I think we have a case of “surveillance slip” where powers intended for limited use in extreme circumstances somehow end up available to Tom, Dick or Harry. As I indicate, that is perhaps the biggest problem - similar to some powers previously requiring a Judge’s authorisation now being available on the say so of a relatively junior Police Officers (e.g., Inspector.).
>Nobody should now be shocked that the powers are being used for more petty issues.
I would agree with you if you had said “surprised” rather than “shocked”. I am not surprised - but I remain shocked, just as it was shocking that the regulations were extended so far in the first place. I think several weeks of surveillance in pursuit of a school catchment area demarcation question is extremely shocking (without even starting to get into questions of responsible use of resources).
Thanks for the comment.
Matt
Well, certainly when it made it as far as debates in council chambers it was clear by then that it was not to be restricted to terrorism - that “serious crime” (for I do remember that phrase used to placate some of us) might include stuff like benefits cheating, child protection issues and so on that could be dealt with by councils. So yes, certainly a creep from the initial conception I guess.
And no - I’m certainly not questioning that review is necessary, that it has gone too far (it was too far for me in 2000!) and it is being widely abused.
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Wasnt the rationale behind RIPA to bring some kind of control to the use of surveillance activities in light of the Human Rights Act?
Not merely to aid the fight against terrorism?
It is only right an proper that there are strict guidelines behind the use of surveillance in relation to the prosecution of the law. The probelm seems to be compounded when activities carried out by the law enforcement agencies and security services are also placed in the laps of public authorities also governed by these guidelines or at least interpreted to be governed by these guidelines. The litigious culture in UK and Europe calls for these pragmatic control measures to ensure a measure of ‘best practice’ on the part of the public body - was that not the reason for RIPA in the first place?
The Act (RIPA) is exactly that - written in such a legalistic fashion that it is difficult to pinpoint where the boundaries actually are be them in relation to Terrorism, Seriuous Crime, or local law enforcment or to a lesser degree upholding of public interests. It allows a subjective interpretation to be held which inevitably comes with risk - risk of abuse.
Some users stick rigidly to the Act (perhaps without a requirement for it) through fear of bad practice, others use it for every time they observe or are likley to observe indiviuals etc. With the inevitable complicated paper chain that follows.
In my experience (having researched this over the last few months for a course) it seems that there is in-sufficient training for public authorities, both those who manage activities (gatekeepers) and those who conduct them (the surveillancee).
Interestingly, the SIA is seeking to regulate private investigators who do this sort of work (who only have the Human Rights Act to worry about in terms of legalistic position when acting as private individuals - i.e. not for a public authority) and to bring qulity control to the private market place.
There does not seem to be any similar measure or strategy for those governed by RIPA or any standardised and quality assured training for public bodies. The police (who use RIPA for most things) seem to be the experts on this and are often called upon as such to advise or train, not having the full understanding of the climate of the public authorities - perhaps not the best role models? The RIPA tool may be one that does not fit every scenario or requirement in this instance. It really depends on the level of private intrusion (planned or not) that will occur).
Another thing to consider here is that any RIPA authorisation has to be approved by an appropriate agent (and grade) within the organisation - only when certain criteria have been met (is there another way to gain the information, proportionality of the methodology for example). Ultimately if it is felt by the Office of Surveillance Comissioners that the proposed use use of surveillance y the authority does not fulfill this criteria then authorisaiton is not granted - this to me identifies agian a lack of understanding within public bodies, or at the very least training. Every net however has its holes.
To balance this surely the use of surveillance (not the cold war signals intelligence or listening device ) in the form of observation by a public body in the interest of identifying fraud and petty crimes that drain precious finance and resources is a good thing as long as it is correctly authorised and managed?
I feel it is, the bad examples that inevitably (and in the case of Poole Bourough Council rightly so) hit the headlines are only the bad cases. We do not see ready examples of how it can improve the lives of the few who are affected by crime or lack of funding as precious resources are spent on removing graffiti or fly tipping waste etc. Only those hard done by the criminal and rogue few of society should be able to comment on the rights and wrongs - potentially the family in Poole may have denied the handicapped parent from aplace for thier child in a local school if they had (and I appreciate they were not) found to by lying. Surveillance in this instance was completely out of order. But I feel we still need it - but it does need to be better controlled and managed. Perhaps there is a requirement for specific authority based surveillance specialists to take on the task as opposed to Tom, Dick or Mary?
I dunno - it all smacks of “we do it because we can” to me. There is no earthly reason I can see personally why email or telephone records should be open to scrutiny any more than, say, “snail mail” correspondence. It’s just because the technology leaves traces that someone feels it’s permissible to use those traces to snoop on people.
Of course if people were more canny with their email, and/or the technology existed for some of it (like encrypting phone conversations) at the very least they would get a knock at the door to ask them for their encryption key and would be alerted to what’s being done to them and give them a right to hear what it is people want their data for.
But maybe you are right - certainly at the time of the act there was much concern that security services in particular were able to gain access to things like phone taps and records with less scrutiny. But just because we can isn’t a good excuse for extending the state into your private correspondence records.