Anyone can interview anyone else under caution. Calling it a ‘police caution’ is extremely misleading. If a jobsworth interviews me I am as entitled as he to remind him that anything he says may also be taken down and may be used in evidence.

RIPA does not simply regulate existing powers, it significantly expands the list of organisations that may use them, and it atttenuates the controls they are subject to.

It is not an anti terror power, just because the guardian labelled it as such doesn’t make it so!

I think you will find that virtually every newspaper refers to the powers as ‘anti-terrorist’ powers because that is how the government of the day sold them to the general public, not withdstanding the unheeded maunderings Labour peers. Your obessive dislike of the Guardian is rather revealing.

Lord Bassam, introducing the bill to parliament: Thursday 25th May 2000

“These powers do not only affect law enforcement agencies in their pursuit of criminals; the Bill also regulates the use of covert surveillance by all public authorities. A beneficial side-effect of the Bill has been the public identification of all the agencies which use this technique in order to ensure that surveillance is regulated and controlled to the same standard across all public authorities.”

It is not, never has been, nor is it legal pedantry to point this out, RIPA controls investigatory powers, it’s akin to saying that local authority officers shouldn’t give a police caution when questioning a suspect because these are police powers under PACE.

It’s rubbish, always has been and always will be.

Has anyone on here ever attempted a RIPA authorisation? I very much doubt it.

RIPA and PACE for that matter is concerned with protecting suspects rights in the face of state power, hence the judicial oversight and application procedure. It is not an anti terror power, just because the guardian labelled it as such doesn’t make it so!

I was not investigated by my Council. They merely organised the BA who later confirmed they had used powers granted by the Terrorism Act in a letter to my MP. Everything is wonderful now and I am full of admiration for everyone and could not hope for better treatment please do not water board me I tried it once on myself and it is horrible can I go now?

My evidence (your honour) is what happened to my friend in the story I outlined above as well as in many other cases – my local Vietnamese barber for instance was beaten shitless and had all his takings stolen by a gang who were alerted to his presence in a deserted car-park where had left his car by a mobile phone call. (Unless you are asking for evidence for my statement that not all kids are violent of course, in which case I refer you to the evidence of a non-violent child near you.

What’s wrong with it is that the authorities have no business in knowing my movements. And if the authorities think they have a reason for surveilling me then they should be obliged to adduce evidence to a court which decide whether there is legitimate reason to infringe my privacy.

Unfortunately, we are moving into a ’surveillence state’, but if that’s the price we have to pay for social order and security, so be it

This is a pretty witless argument. The spending of countless millions on surveilling the vast majority of people who do not commit crimes is a waste of money that demonstrably does not make us safer. It also marks a deterioration of our national life and reduces respect between the public and those in authority.

Evidence?

True. It effectively legitimised dodgy practice that before had been at the edges of legality.

And it is ignorance when RIPA use by councils is spoken of in terms of terror legislation

From a point of extreme legal pedantry, that is correct. However the legislation was justified to Parliament and to the country as being measures designed to tackle serious organised crime and terrorism. It was not presented as a way of facilitating trivial investigations into misrepresentations made by parents to get their child into the school of their choice.

It is analogous to the use of anti-terror legislation against Iceland. Government apologists say that the letter of the law permits the powers to be used that way. Which is correct but utterly beside the point. When one one refers back to the debates in Parliament one sees that the powers were justified on the basis of dealing with ‘financial terrorism’ but were drafted in a sufficiently loose way to permit far wider application.

On many occasions in the past few years, government ministers have been asked why legislation is drafted in such a way to permit wider application that the purported reasons for the legislation. We are always told that of course the legislation will never be used in this way. The misuse of RIPA and anti-terrorism legislation are good reasons why such claims should not be believed.

it gave none, it merely legitimised what was ordinary practice before hand.

And it is ignorance when RIPA use by councils is spoken of in terms of terror legislation. the clue is in the title of the legislation, its not Regulation of Investigations of Terror Act (RITA) it covers all investigations, and whether you like it or not councils are tasked with investigating criminal offences.