{"id":44408,"date":"2013-06-23T09:07:07","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T08:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=44408"},"modified":"2013-06-23T16:32:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T15:32:37","slug":"councils-abusing-snooping-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/councils-abusing-snooping-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"Councils Abusing Snooping Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mick Meaney<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rinf.com\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Councils in Scotland have been accused of abusing the\u00a0Regulation of Investigatory Powers Scotland Act (RIPSA) to secretly monitor and spy on thousands of unsuspecting citizens without court order, for a range of\u00a0bizarre reasons including using the\u00a0legislation to hide\u00a0\u00a0CCTV cameras at a primary school and in a bowling club.<\/p>\n<p>A Freedom of Information Act Request has found that Scottish councils have have launched\u00a01,500 spying operations in the past five years, resulting in\u00a0only 32 convictions.<\/p>\n<p>RISPA was initially\u00a0designed to help authorities to combat terrorism and serious crime, but councils have been using the\u00a0legislation to investigate mundane cases including complaints of televisions being too loud, the dragging of furniture, doors being slammed, people running up and down stairs too loudly and even complaints of washing lines being vandalised.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0legislation allows councils to conduct direct\u00a0surveillance including the photographing of someone in a public place, the bugging of someone, the use of undercover agents to follow and gather evidence, the installation of hidden cameras and the interception of emails.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/news\/uk\/409587\/Surveillance-Scotland-Now-councils-spy-on-schools-and-bowlers?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-express-scotland+%28Daily+Express+%3A%3A+Scotland+Feed%29\" target=\"_blank\">The Express<\/a> Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThese powers were intended for serious crimes, and instead councils used them for snooping on people who made too much noise going up and down their stairs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom over 1,000 surveillance operations\u00e2\u20ac\u201ajust\u00e2\u20ac\u201aa handful\u00e2\u20ac\u201aof convictions were actually secured, and that should be ringing alarm bells that councils are not getting the important question of when to put someone under surveillance right in a great deal of cases.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToo often local authorities jump to\u00e2\u20ac\u201aheavy-handed\u00e2\u20ac\u201atactics\u00e2\u20ac\u201awhen more proportionate alternatives are available. People are right to question why it is that their elected councillors are not doing more to protect their privacy and rein in this snooping.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers\u2019 Alliance blasted councils for \u201cwasting\u201d dwindling budgets on secret investigations,\u00a0\u00a0said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cCouncils should focus on delivering the services residents pay for, not wasting their cash snooping on them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExtensive use of costly covert surveillance represents poor value for taxpayers\u2019 money, and in many cases will be a totally unjustified invasion of privacy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A spokesman for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThere is absolutely no evidence of the over-use or misuse of RIPSA legislation. The use is proportionate, necessary and legal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Councils in Scotland have been accused of abusing the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Scotland Act (RIPSA) to secretly monitor and spy on thousands of unsuspecting citizens without court order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1614,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}