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| Anti-terror laws used to spy on family |
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| Saturday, 12 April 2008 | |
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The family, from Poole in Dorset, said they had been tailed for three weeks by council officials trying to establish whether they had given a false address in an attempt to get their three-year-old daughter a place at a heavily oversubscribed local nursery school, which their two older children had attended. The family had in fact done nothing wrong, and the investigation was eventually aborted. Yesterday it emerged that Poole borough council had legitimately used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to monitor the family. This involved keeping a detailed log of their movements for two weeks, following the mother's car as she took her three children to school each day and even watching the family home to ascertain their sleeping habits. The Act, passed in 2000, was supposed to allow security agencies to combat terrorism. The 39-year-old mother, a businesswoman who wished to remain anonymous, said: "I can't imagine a greater invasion of our privacy. I'm incensed that legislation designed to combat terrorism can be turned on a three-year-old. It was very creepy when we found out that people had been watching us and making notes. Councils should be protecting children, not spying on them." The council defended its right to investigate families in a covert manner, saying it had used the law twice in the past year to successfully prove parents were lying about where they lived. Source: The Independent Readers have left 7 comments.
Turn The Table:
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Well then, if that is the case, the people can use this act to spy on the City Council members too. Which, with the money they spend, etc, I might as well do that and turn table round. Hey, if they can do it, so can anyone else.
Then they can taste their own medicine.
(1)
2008-04-13 05:49:55
K Urban:
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This all stems from Tony Blair, ‘’Mr Dick Tator’’ himself and the arrogant totalitarian legacy from his New Labour government by the few.
No more ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’. We have an almost complete loss of privacy, with monitoring by the State, and our personal details floating everywhere, with a high risk of loss as we have seen. It all starts to peter downwards and so now, as we can see, Councils, Corporations and Companies all feel they can start doing the same. I thus could not agree more with comments from ''Turn The Table''. Time for a commission, independent of MPs, to monitor the movements and expenses of MPs and report to us. Enough of this squandering of both time and money whilst lecturing the rest of us.
(2)
2008-04-13 13:38:58
Shahid Khan:
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The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is not an anti-terror law, it was designed to establish a regulatory framework for all investigative powers by law enforcement agencies. It is used for kinds of investigations.
(3)
2008-04-14 10:48:24
Rob:
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This is exactly what i have always stated in my comments would happen.
the laws being passed under the guise of fighting terrorism are laws that will effect all of us. we had 30 years of the I.R.A which carried out a sustained campaign of bombing and killings yet we never had these type of laws. we need to wake up and before the rights that were obtained by great suffering and sacrifice are taken away.
(4)
2008-04-14 10:53:57
RSD:
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While the business woman decries that the Council has used surveillance to check up on these parents, it remains true that the parents did apply for a place in the school knowing full well that they would move as soon as they secure that place. It is a major problem for schools, local authorities and parents that some parents make false statements about their place of abode in order to secure a place in a high achieving school. While we can all sympathise with their desire to the best by their children, whenever this happens it means that average families are denied places in their local schools. I live in one of these places and my children have been lucky that they have got places in the local school, but most of my neighbours have not been so lucky. The problem is that parents move into the area when their child is four and move out when the child is five or six, but do not surrender the school place. The additional consequence is that the neighbourhood is full of cars at the beginning and end of the school day as these parenst ferry their children in and out. And of course my neighbour have to ferry their children to some other distant school because there are no school places locally.
(5)
2008-04-14 19:01:50
Syed:
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While the business woman decries that the Council has used surveillance to check up on these parents, it remains true that the parents did apply for a place in the school knowing full well that they would move as soon as they secure that place. — RSDRegarding the actual R.I.P Act, Shahid is correct that it wasn't created specifically for anti-terror purposes, but isn't it worrying that that a so-called liberal government can "legitimately" spy on its citizens?
(6)
2008-04-14 19:30:08
RSD:
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Syed, I watched the interviews with the parents. They have already moved into another area some distance from the catchment boundaries. They had bought the house before they made the school application but hadn't sold their first house. So they nominated the first house as their prime place of abode until they secured the school place - then they sold it. OK for those that have the money I guess.
The reason that local government needs the ability to conduct surveillance upon residents is that vast numbers of people are making fraudulent claims each year. this is not just benefit fraud, it includes Residents Parking Permits, school applications, disabled parking permits and so on. In the end the people that do this are stealing from you and me. But as long as Councils lacked the means to get evidence against these people then they could steal from us with alacrity.
(7)
2008-04-14 20:28:25
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A family who were wrongly suspected of lying on a school application
form have discovered that their local council used anti-terrorism
surveillance powers to spy on them.
