Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day
Britain is in danger of becoming a "surveillance state" as authorities including councils launch bugging operations against 1,000 people a day.
Councils, police and intelligence services are tapping and intercepting the phone calls, emails and letters of hundreds of thousands of people every
year, an official report said.
Phone and email communications tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day
A total of 653 state bodies are able to intercept personal calls and emails
Those being bugged include people suspected of illegal fly-tipping as councils use little known powers to carry out increasingly sophisticated
surveillance to catch offenders.
There's also a similar article dealing with this issue in
The
Guardian.
Why on earth do local councils have the power to bug telephones of people suspected of fly-tipping? It's not like flytipping is something you plot
over a telephone with a shadowy group of co-conspirators, anyway...
I'm not at all keen on the idea of so many agencies being able to use communications intercepts. It should be restricted to MI5, MI6, the police and
GCHQ (all with the approval of ministers and/or judges) - I would also favour a Parliamentary Private Secretary being added to the Home Office whose
job it is to specifically protect civil liberties. I appreciate the need for phone taps and other similar activities in the case of serious crimes,
but it has gotten way out of hand.
[edit on 29/1/08 by Ste2652]
