Councils have used a law designed to combat terrorism to access
more than 900 people's private phone and e-mail records,
reports The Daily Telegraph.
Councils have used the
Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to investigate misdemeanours
such as dog fouling, under-age smoking, dog quarantine breaches and
unlicensed storage of petrol, reports the paper.
The 2000 Ripa Act was originally brought in to combat terrorism
and serious crime.
In April, it was reported that a council in Dorset had used Ripa
to spy for weeks on a family wrongly suspected of breaking rules on
school catchment areas.
When Ripa was passed, only nine organisations, including the
police and security services, were allowed to use it, but that
number has since risen to 792, including 474 councils, says the
Telegraph.
Under the
Freedom
of Information Act, the paper drew responses from 152 councils,
which revealed they had used Ripa to examine 936 people's private
communications data in the 2006/7 financial year.