Council spy cases hit 1,000 a month

Councils and other public bodies are using legislation designed to combat terrorism in order to spy on people, obtain their telephone records and find out who they are emailing. The full extent to which local authorities take advantage of new powers given to them by the Government came to light after a Dorset council admitted spying for more than two weeks on a family it suspected of lying on a school application form.

Privacy campaigners said figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph showed the extent to which Britain has become a "surveillance state", and likened the tactics employed by councils to the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany.

Last year, councils and government departments made 12,494 applications for "directed surveillance", according to figures released by the Office of the Surveillance Commissioner. This was almost double the number for the previous year.

In contrast, applications from police and other law enforcement agencies fell during the same period, to about 19,000, and one local government body admitted that councils and other public bodies would soon carry out more surveillance than the police.

Councils are increasingly using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) to investigate anything that can be classed as a criminal offence. The Home Office website describes the legislation as a tool for "preventing crime, including terrorism"

But it is used to spy on otherwise law-abiding people committing minor offences such as fly-tipping and failing to pick up dog mess and to gather evidence that can be used to instigate fines.

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "I am astonished that this very serious legislation is being misused in this way in cases which seem to be petty and vindictive. We have just completed an inquiry into the surveillance society and we have noted that there has been a huge growth in the use of these laws.

"The people responsible have some very serious questions to answer."

Gosport borough council in Hampshire said yesterday that it was currently using Ripa for an undercover investigation into dog fouling. Council officers equipped with digital cameras and binoculars are spying on dog walkers.

Chris Davis, the council's head of internal audit, said: "We have strategically placed members of our enforcement team to blend in with the natural environment and observe people walking dogs. They are using digital cameras to get hard evidence. Dog fouling is a real issue and in this case it is happening close to a leisure facility where children play."

Stoke-on-Trent city council said it used Ripa to investigate "illegal building work", while several councils have put cameras in tins and piles of twigs to catch fly-tippers.

When Ripa was passed in 2000, only nine organisations, such as the police and security services, were allowed to use it, but that number has risen to 792, including 474 councils.

In 2006, more than 1,000 applications per day were being made to use Ripa powers. The Act allows councils to authorise surveillance, obtain phone records and details of email traffic from personal computers (though not their contents) and obtain details of websites individuals are logging on to.

Councils cannot bug telephones, a power reserved for the police and security forces and which must be authorised by the Home Office.

As the Joyce family of Poole, Dorset, found, Ripa allows council staff to spy on people suspected of lying in school applications. Tim Joyce, 37, his girlfriend Jenny Paton, 39, and their three daughters were followed on school runs and watched at their home by Poole borough council to make sure they lived in the catchment area of the school their three-year-old daughter attends.

Miss Paton described the council's actions as "a grotesque invasion of privacy". Mr Joyce said: "It used to be that the Home Secretary had to talk to a judge to get surveillance through the police. Now it seems the world and his wife can carry out surveillance whenever they feel like it."

Gus Hosein, of the campaign group Privacy International, said: "We are on a par with China. The tactics of local authorities are more like the behaviour of the Stasi."