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A Democratic Licence to Operate
Privacy and civil-liberties groups have been vocal in their opposition to what they
perceive as the use of intrusive powers by local authorities. A 2010 report by Big Brother
Watch regarding the use of RIPA 2000 powers by local authorities highlighted a number
of concerns, further fuelling the debate:35
•
•
•
•
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Councils alone have carried out over eleven surveillance operations every day
over the past two years
Over a dozen authorities have used RIPA 2000 powers to spy on dog owners to
see whose animals were responsible for dog fouling
Five authorities have used their powers to spy on people suspected of breaking
the indoor smoking ban
Suffolk County Council used RIPA 2000 powers to make a ‘test purchase’ of a puppy.36
Although RIPA 2000 clearly set out who the Act’s main ‘customers’ or users are, the
degree to which local authorities had access to the same intrusive powers as the SIAs has
come as a surprise to some and caused significant concern for others. Some civil-liberties
organisations are particularly critical of the perceived low threshold for authorisation
necessary to invoke certain powers under RIPA 2000, and whether the use of its powers
by some public sector bodies is truly proportionate to the circumstances:
[W]e must decide what sort of society we want to live in. It would reduce crime and disorder
to ban alcohol or the motorcar or introduce a night curfew. We don’t do these things because
it would be disproportionate and illiberal. Equally, to many people, the possession of such
intrusive powers by councils will seem unnecessary to the ends they seek to achieve. With
very many of these things councils ‘investigate’ it may be concluded that the cure is much
worse than the disease.37
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In 2010, the new coalition government announced that it would ‘ban the use of powers
in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act by councils, unless they are signed off by a
magistrate and required for stopping serious crime’.38 In accordance with the Protection
of Freedoms Act (which came into law in May 2012), the use of RIPA by local authorities
now requires the approval of a magistrate and directed surveillance can only be used in
cases whereby conviction would result in a custodial sentence of at least six months.39
The Protection of Freedoms Act ‘introduced a long overdue needed safeguard against
unwarranted local authority surveillance’, according to Big Brother Watch.40
35. The report was published before the then Coalition government met its commitments to
curbing the abilities of Councils to use RIPA.
36. Big Brother Watch, ‘The Grim RIPA: Cataloguing the Ways in Which Local Authorities Have
Abused Their Covert Surveillance Powers’, 2010, p. 1.
37. Ibid., p. 7.
38. HM Government, ‘The Coalition: Our Programme for Government’, 2010.
39. Duncan Gardham, ‘Shake-up of Counter-Terrorism Laws Hits Councils’, Daily Telegraph, 26
January 2011.
40. Big Brother Watch, ‘A Legacy of Suspicion: How RIPA Has Been Used by Local Authorities
and Public Bodies’, 2012, p. 3.