The Liberal Democrats have today called for better supervision of the use of surveillance powers: they think magistrates should have to approve any use of legal powers of surveillance. Fair enough; I’m not sure how well Magistrates’ Courts could cope with these applications, but with the principle I have no problem. Nor do I dispute that these powers – like any other special powers any public authority has – may be and probably are regularly abused. It’s right to try and shape the system to prevent this as much as possible. It’s important for instance that those who are responsible for using the powers are properly trained in the legislation – according to the Chief Surveillance Commissioner in his 2008-9 report, not all police forces or senior police officers take the training seriously, even though proper training seems to improve compliance with the law.
What I do have a problem with, though, is the suggestion often made in the debate around these powers that surveillance should not be used to tackle supposely “trivial” offending and anti-social behaviour – examples often cited are dog fouling, neighbour nuisance, fly-tipping and cheating on school admissions.
I don’t see these things as trivial at all; nor do I think it makes any sense to see them as no-go areas for surveillance. You can only think noisy neighbours are a trivial problem if you’ve never lived next to one, and never had council officials telling you there’s nothing they can do. You can only be confident that school admissions cheats are harmless if your child hasn’t been turned down for the school of your choice. And you can only see things like fly-tipping as trivial if you think environmental law is a waste of time, and we should all be free to pollute wherever we like.
We have choices here. We could just abandon any attempt to be fair in allocating school places. We could happily allow public spaces and the countryside to be made filthy by people who don’t care, and allow residential areas to be plagued by home DJs. I wouldn’t want to live in that society, mind. If like me you think laws on these matters should be respected and enforced, and you want to give councils the job of enforcing them – then councils should be allowed the tools to do so.
I tend to agree. I think the trouble is people associate surveillance with phone taps and email intercepts, rather than simply some council officer watching a likely site for fly-tipping or whatever, which is much more likely to be the case in most of these situations.
According to The Times (10th August) public bodies had obtained access to private telephone and e-mail records about 1,400 times a day. The phrase “public bodies” covers many emanations of the State including the Police and local authorities. Hence, the number of times local authorities request access to communications data will only be a fraction of the total. It is the local authority use which appears to give rise to the greater concern.
British people instinctively dislike these modern forms of eavesdropping which are infringements of personal privacy: surveillance cameras; covert surveillance; retaining communications records; the DNA database; ID cards and so on. However, people will ususally accept the use of RIPA powers if they are targeted at really serious criminality. They see the use of surveillance to catch persons committing non-imprisonable offences (e.g. dog-foulers) as disproportionate to the matter being investigated. In my view there is a strong case for curtailing the use by local authorities of these powers and it is perhaps in such areas where it might be beneficial for the local authority to have to justify its request to use the powers to a judicial person such as a District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts).
Carl, I am a bit surprised at your casual conflation of criminal matters with this notion of “cheating on school admissions”. In the only case that anyone has every tried to make anything of, that of Mrinal Patel case, I have yet to see any convincing argument that she broke the law, and the collapse of the case on its self-evident failure to meet the tests of the 2006 Fraud Act speaks for itself.
If you want unrestricted deployment of RIPA powers against actual offences, regardless of gravity, then that’s a respectable case to argue. But unrestricted deployment of RIPA powers against behaviour on the basis that is does not fit in with an aspect of political doctrine, or a local government official’s opinion of what’s right and proper, is not even a slippery slope – it is the muddy pool at the end.
Running the latter case into a list of the former in order to associate the two is not the prettiest debating tactic.
In my earlier posts I said – “In my view there is a strong case for curtailing the use by local authorities of these powers and it is perhaps in such areas where it might be beneficial for the local authority to have to justify its request to use the powers to a judicial person such as a District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts).”
It is interesting that Sir Paul Kennedy’s report actually appears to give greater encouragement to local authorities to use these powers. Sir Paul states that he is aware of criticism that local authorities have made inappropriate use of the powers but he adds that “no evidence has emerged from the inspections which have been conducted during the last three years to indicate communications data is being used to investigate offences of a trivial nature, such as dog fouling or littering.” Later in the report (para 3.45) Sir Paul states that – “ …. our inspections have shown (that) local authorities could often make more use of this powerful tool to investigate crimes which are relevant to their statutory responsibilities.”
If that is to be the case then some form of application to a judicial person seems even more appropriate.
It’s important to separate political views and action from legal responses.
I’m made furious by dogs’ mess too, but what’s the best thing to do? If it takes two surveillance officers mostly hanging about (no doubt fiddling their time sheets and hiding in the cafe) , a process server and a local authority solicitor, not to mention the expense of running a court, to prosecute some old lady who is too arthritic to bend down and clear up after her little doggie, wouldn’t it just be cheaper to have someone go round with a shovel or a Green Machine, so they can clear up other detritus at the same time?
Taxpayers want clean streets, not necessarily legal vengance – particularly if they don’t get the clean streets anyway. “Look, we got a conviction” is not much comfort when I’m scraping doggy-doo off my blue suede shoes. Again.
I can get at least three road sweepers for the cost of one lawyer. I can probably get almost two teachers for the cost of the woman who should have read the Fraud Act – or your own excellent blog – before wasting everyone’s time and money trying to bring a prosecution against Mrinal Patel. Two extra teachers might have done much to improve the schools, thereby improving the service instead of squabbling about allocation. It is not supportable to tell a parent “every child matters, only not yours, hoppit”.
Do people fly tip rubbish outside recycling sites when they are closed? Well, what about if we keep the sites open. What about if we fix the problem, then only prosecute when people don’t use the reasonable solutions which are available to them?
I think that this is serious for a number of reasons:
“Security creep” – abracadabra 9 organisations which had this power at the start has now become 320 (or 790 if you count each LA).
Breadth of application of the powers. For example the definitions are too woolly:
“In the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder, in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom, in the interests of public safety, for the purpose of protecting public health and for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department.”
The exuberant way they are used. I am not convinced that these powers need to be used when that happens (no time to argue chapter and verse, but I’ happy that is the case). Authorisation is too easy. It needs an independent check, rather than just your manager in the council.
And for various other reasons.
Matt
.-= Matt Wardman´s last blog ..Mandelson should shut up about cross-dressing =-.
Again, though, I think it’s important to separate out general surveillance and information intercept. Before RIPA, were there even any controls on councils using general surveillance, eg following people to see where they lived? There probably should be higher authorization required if someone wants to tap a phone or get comms data from a computer – in fact, I’m surprised there isn’t – but I’m not at all sure it’s necessary for the sort of minor – what might be called non-intrusive, in that it only sees what happens in public places – surveillance which is also covered by the act.