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2:07pm Saturday 12th April 2008
HAMPSHIRE councils have denied using snooping powers to check up on parents over school admissions.
Southampton City Council and Hampshire County Council distanced themselves from Poole civic bosses who admitted using the tactic on three occasions to check whether children were living within school catchment areas.
Yesterday Poole council said it would continue spying after it emerged an undercover officer had made a detailed log of an innocent family's daily activities without their knowledge for more than two weeks.
The council was using powers under the Regulation of Investigator Powers Act, introduced in 2000 partly on the grounds of improving national security. Evidence can be used in criminal proceedings.
The civil rights group Liberty called the spying "disproportionate" and "intrusive", while Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman and Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne called for council powers to be "reined back and restricted to important cases."
The Hampshire councils, including Eastleigh and New Forest, said they restricted their use of surveillance powers to exposing benefits cheats and to test purchasing.
mr x, not poole thank goodness says...
6:53pm Sat 12 Apr 08
Bill wrote:yeah, big brother is watching.
I think that the novel 1984 was written as a hand book for the Poole council. Next they will install cameras in public conveniences to check on how much toilet paper people use.
Mike, Hythe says...
7:51pm Sat 12 Apr 08
Condor Man, Southampton says...
9:28pm Sat 12 Apr 08
Ian, bitterne park says...
10:35pm Sat 12 Apr 08
JB Soton, Gossport says...
12:49am Sun 13 Apr 08
Derek, Dibden Purlieu says...
6:24am Sun 13 Apr 08
Condor Man, Southampton says...
8:01am Sun 13 Apr 08
Derek wrote:You're right Derek, the state seem to have a hand in everything we do now. Give Brown another term and you'll have to start declaring your interests, beliefs etc and no doubt have to buy a licence to practice them.
The only part that George Orwell got wrong was the date. We really are the most spied on nation on earth, and we used to go on about how bad Stalin and Hitler were or how the Stasi spied on their own people. They were beginners compared to our government.
Wills, Soton says...
1:47pm Sun 13 Apr 08
paul b, says...
3:06pm Sun 13 Apr 08
Roy Stockdill, Watford says...
3:23pm Tue 15 Apr 08
paul b wrote:That is the typical reaction of someone too stupid and blind to see what is happening around him! As a nation we are literally sleepwalking into a Big Brother state, the surveillance society where government keeps a close eye on all its citizens and what they are doing. "I'm not doing anything wrong and I've nothing to hide" may well be your feeling now, but look 10 or 20 years down the line and see what might happen when a far-from-benign government decides it has a right to know, say, what books you are reading, what e-mails you are sending and even what you are thinking. Don't you realise that this is how all totalitarian fascist dictatorships begin, with people's freedoms being eroded away a bit at a time? It happened in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union and is happening today in countries like China and Zimbabwe, where there is no such thing as freedom of speech. Open your eyes and wake up, sunshine!
I dont do anything wrong in life so i dont care that im being "spied" on Get over yourself you lot
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Bill, DeSoto MO USA says...
5:04pm Sat 12 Apr 08