Up to 1,000 people per day are bugged

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.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

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]

This is alarming I didn't realise that this was that much of a problem.
I'm gonna purposely get my phone bugged by becoming a 'suspected fly tipper', however you do that, and then call a sex line.
They can basically bug anyone who throws any type of litter on the floor with that poor excuse to intrude.

forgive my ignorance but wtf is fly-tipping? it makes me think of cow-tipping, but flies have a sufficiently large footprint to offset their short vertical stature...

is using discount flight booking services illegal? "psst, you can fly from london to nyc for $50...keep it on the down-low..."

peace: no offense but i had no idea what you meant by "They can basically bug anyone who throws any type of litter on the floor with that poor excuse to intrude."

i checked the links and found no definition for fly-tipping. could someone elaborate?

Fly tipping is basically dumping waste anywhere that isn't an authorised landfill site (since, for some items, you have to pay for them to be disposed of people take them to some secluded woodland or other quiet place and dump them illegally).

It's a blight on the environment but it's hardly terrorism, is it?

reply to post by Ste2652


Thanks STE, it must be an American thing, cause i had no idea what Fly-Tipping was...


Things are going to far... technology is becoming our enemy...

ok, for the well-being of my neurons and the structural integrity of my skull, i'll not try to make a logical connection between "fly tipping" and garbage dumping. =)

in any case, yes that's crap. i think it's depressing - the amount of surveillance being put into place by the UK, and the US doesn't seem to be too far behind.

Originally posted by TKainZero
reply to post by Ste2652

 

Things are going to far... technology is becoming our enemy...

your right, even though we can listen to music, trade stocks, and text your neighbors grandmother on her new iphone when ever and where ever, there is some one in a window less room listening to you order a pizza

what are we doing to our selfs? and the worst part of it all that it will never stop

[edit on 31-1-2008 by ucanneverdie]

It seems ridiculous to me, that:
A) the Councils have the right to plough "much needed" money and time to try to catch a few Fly-tippers?

B) If you are not a fly-tipper but just get caught up in an intercepted phone call, how long will information that is collated during these intercepted calls be held, where will they be held, who has the right to view / listen to this information, and what facilities have been made for the destruction of said information, once its been confirmed that "you are not a fly-tipper and you phone was bugged by accident?

Just a thought?

Wow, so 1,000 peoples privacy is invaved a day without them knowing. Can they justify this amount of bugging, is there a list with names, reasons and so on and forth, just seems to me like 1000 a day is a little too high.

Dorian Gray