Published: 22:36 GMT, 22 August 2012 | Updated: 22:41 GMT, 22 August 2012
The man on the motorbike seemed to come from nowhere. One minute I was loading my car at the start of a bank holiday weekend, the next I was being photographed by a sinister figure in black who looked like a vigilante.
At first I thought he was wearing a balaclava beneath his motorcycle helmet, but it turned out that he had a scarf wrapped around his face, leaving just a slit for his eyes.
He didn’t engage in conversation. He simply took out a digital camera and snapped a photo of my car, which I had pulled out of its space further down the road, and — as there was a neighbour’s car outside my house — had parked half-overlapping her car and half-overlapping an empty motorcycle bay, so that I could load my suitcases.
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Surveillance operations: Town halls have launched an astonishing 9,600 spying missions on the public in the past three years
Apparently this was an offence. The fine I received in the post a few days later was for ‘obstructing the street’, even though the street was deserted.
When I rang my local council to complain, a jobsworth told me that if someone had been taken ill and an ambulance had arrived at that moment it might not have been able to pass by at speed and they could have died.
I told them to get a grip. You could have got two buses through the space.
They didn’t care. I had been caught double-parked outside my own house, in an empty street, on a bank holiday for a minute-and-a-half — and they were going to throw the book at me.
Welcome to Surveillance Britain.
Yesterday, a report revealed just how much our freedoms are being trampled on by local councils and their new-found love of covert methods.
Town halls have launched an astonishing 9,600 spying missions on the public in the past three years, using laws meant for investigating terror suspects.
Bin cam: Spying tactics include trapping householders putting out rubbish early by using motion-activated cameras on lampposts and inside tin cans A total of 345 councils have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 9,607 times since 2009 — the equivalent of around nine spying missions a day.
Some 26 local authorities have used it to spy on dog owners suspected of letting their animals foul pavements. A further seven have used the powers to investigate suspected breaches of the smoking ban.
Suffolk County Council conducted a ‘test purchase of dating agency services’. Another council investigated a fraudulent escort agency.
Why? What business is it of the local council if men are losing money to shady pseudo-prostitution services who take their credit card details over the phone and then don’t send the girl? Surely that is their own look-out.
The report, A Legacy Of Surveillance: Calling Time On The Grim RIPA, is by the excellent think-tank Big Brother Watch. All those who are worried about the erosion of civil liberties in this country should read it. Look up your local council and see what they have been up to.
You might find that householders who put their bins out at the wrong time in your neighbourhood are being spied on.
This is a breathtaking outrage, not least because the Government has repeatedly made it clear to local authorities that they do not have the right to fine people for minor misdemeanours to do with household rubbish disposal.
Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has even written to councils to tell them to refrain from imposing refuse fines for infringements such as putting wheelie bins in the wrong position, because the fines are not legal.
However, far from setting an example by upholding the law themselves, councils continue to try it on, hoping that we do not know our rights and that we will pay them their pettifogging fixed penalties.
Those putting out their rubbish too early are being caught by motion-activated cameras on lamp-posts and even hidden inside tin cans, if you please.
Were the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau writing today, his famous quote would read:
‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is on CCTV.’
A culture of snooping is developing that goes beyond even the use of RIPA, which the Government, to its credit, is trying to crack down on by requiring councils to apply for court orders before they can use it.
In Lambeth, south London, where I live, there were only two RIPA uses last year, for investigating the misuse of disabled blue badges. But an insidious atmosphere of surveillance prevails, aimed at petty offences.
Invasion: Rules about only biking on shown cycle routes adorn pathways Parking wardens no longer wear uniforms, but zoom around on little motorbikes wearing plain clothes so you can’t see them coming.
Meanwhile, the following is a list of the bylaws on a warning notice at my local park:
‘Keep your dog under control’; ‘Pick up your dog’s mess’ ‘Cycle only on marked cycle routes’; ‘Put your litter in a bin or take it home with you’; ‘Be courteous to other park users’; ‘Do not allow your dog to harm or disturb wildlife’ (This includes squirrels, which are technically vermin, but the council will still prosecute you if your dog catches one); ‘Do not allow your dog to enter the lake’; ‘Do not use barbecues’; ‘Do not pick flowers or damage trees or plants.’
A lot of these are pretty subjective. Walking on grassland invariably results in some sort of plant being damaged. And the faded cycle markings on the paths are virtually impossible to follow correctly.
Part of the reason for all this moralising from councils is a desire to control, of course.
Catching a squirrel-botherer or sticking a tag saying ‘Contamination!’ on a garden waste sack when there is a small piece of cellophane inside it — as happened to me — no doubt gives the town hall bureaucrats immense job satisfaction.
But there is a deeper, more malevolent reason, too.
Many councils are targeting minor offences such as flouting the smoking ban, dog fouling and dropping litter One has to ask why, if the authorities can use this technology to patrol wheelie bin placement, they cannot use it to catch street gangs in the midst of burglaries, or dealing drugs on estates.
Could it be because householders pushing their bin out too early, or dog walkers in Hunter wellies who have allowed their spaniel to chase a water rat are sitting ducks to be tapped for money?
Gang members take months to put through the courts and, even if convicted, rarely cough up when served with a fine.
This would explain why even Tory councils are guilty of using RIPA, because it really isn’t about ideology — which would surely see Conservative-led authorities shun such Soviet measures — but about what the budgets require.
Hard-pressed local authorities know which side their bread is buttered. There is simply no money in chasing the real trouble-makers.
And so, as the criminals go unpunished, the hapless, law-abiding folks who always pay are the subject of an increasingly merciless assault on their civil liberties.
While there are obvious exceptions — no one who complains about benefit fraud can object to JobCentre Plus making use of surveillance 34,093 times between 2009 and 2012 to catch out benefit cheats — most of these fines have nothing to do with maintaining safety and propriety.
If Lambeth was really concerned about me being dangerously double-parked, for example, then a parking warden should ask me to move on, not photograph my car before driving off, leaving me still ‘blocking’ the road.
Councils refer to their spies as ‘covert human intelligence sources’. In many cases they are council employees — dog wardens, parking attendants or trading standards officials — but they can also be schoolchildren, recruited to go undercover to test for the under-age sale of alcohol or cigarettes.
A few months ago, a leaflet came through my door asking me to be a neighbourhood warden.
This turned out to involve snooping on my neighbours and reporting them for littering and other minor offences. No thank you.
Presumably, though, there are residents doing this, patrolling the streets, telling tales to the authorities about undesirable behaviour.
How long, therefore, before we start being fined by Big Brother not just for doing the wrong thing, but for saying the wrong thing?
For cracking what is deemed to be a bad taste joke, perhaps, as we walk down the street with a friend, or on our mobile phone, thinking we are having a private conversation?
Not very long, if we carry on like this.
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