Miranda Bryant reports: London councils used anti-terror laws to snoop on residents more than 1,000 times in two years, it was revealed today. The figures, obtained by campaign group Big Brother Watch, also show that only 71 of the secret investigations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act against Londoners between April 2008 and March…
Tag: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files
Chris Williams reports: The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record. His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer…
UK: Only a ‘minimal’ invasion of privacy: Snooping council spied on family 21 times in 3 weeks
A council which used controversial laws to spy on a mother and her family 21 times in three weeks insisted today that its actions only ‘minimally’ invaded their privacy. Poole Borough Council had also used Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) legislation on two other occasions to determine whether families were living in the right…
A request to snoop on public every 60 seconds
Councils, police and other public bodies are seeking access to people’s private telephone and email records almost 1,400 times a day, new figures have disclosed. The authorities made more than 500,000 requests for confidential communications data last year, equivalent to spying on one in every 78 adults, leading to claims that Britain had “sleepwalked into…