COUNCIL officers have been using laws designed to tackle terrorism to snoop on residents, figures obtained by the Swindon Advertiser have revealed.

Swindon Council authorised 126 operations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) in the last 10 years.

The council has used covert surveillance to secretly record people on CCTV cameras, monitor phone calls and emails and even snoop on people using eBay.

Its use of RIPA powers peaked in 2007/08 when there were 32 separate operations. There were six operations in 2009/10.

The figures emerged following a request for information by the Swindon Advertiser and campaign group Big Brother Watch using the Freedom of Information Act.

RIPA was introduced by the Labour Government in 2000 but the new coalition Government has announced that it will ban the use of powers in the Act by councils, unless they are signed off by a magistrate and required for stopping serious crime.

Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “These figures show that Swindon Council has been abusing anti-terror RIPA powers, placing members of the public under surveillance for nonsense reasons.

“The coalition Government plans to force councils to get warrants before snooping on us simply doesn’t go far enough.

“If the offence is serious enough to merit covert surveillance, then it should be in the hands of the police.”

The council has not provided specific details of why the operations were launched in each case and would not say how much it had cost, but it did say an application to recover the costs was made after every successful prosecution. It did not say how many of these there had been.

It said the act was mainly used for things like making test purchases of products that trading standards have received complaints about for being mis-described or illegal.

In a number of cases these related to pornography being sold through classified ads in free newspapers. The act was also used to make test purchases of alcohol or other age-restricted products by child volunteers.

And it said it monitored eBay to check on the sale of counterfeit goods.

The act was also used to trace the owners of mobile phones and landlines who were suspected of being rogue traders and to carry out surveillance on those rogue traders.

And it was routinely used to tackle fly-tipping and graffiti, unauthorised taxis, benefit fraudsters and even the sale of unfit meat and over-crowding in houses of multiple occupancy.

A council spokesman said: “We want to reassure people we only use RIPA for serious matters. We use it to tackle anti-social and criminal behaviour, which residents have reported to us.

“We have to justify why we have used the powers in every instance through an authorisation process, which is regularly inspected by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, and we can only use the surveillance measures to prevent crime and disorder.

“We only use covert surveillance when it is proportional and necessary and, if we can conduct the surveillance overtly, we will. RIPA has been extremely effective in dealing with issues such as graffiti and has assisted our Trading Standards team in their investigations.”

SWINDON Council admitted that there had been conflicting advice over the years as to whether the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act applied to some of the activities it has been investigating.

Each time the Act is invoked, a request is made by the officer describing in detail what information is sought through the surveillance, how, when, by whom and why the surveillance will take place, and why it is necessary and proportionate to conduct covert surveillance.

An authorising officer then considers the request and details exactly what surveillance can take place. The authorising officer is the chief executive, group directors, some directors and some heads of service and the whole process is overseen by the director of law and corporate governance.

The whole system is inspected every two years by an inspector from the surveillance commissioner’s office.

RIPA can be invoked by government officials on the grounds of national security, and for the purposes of detecting crime, preventing disorder, public safety, protecting public health, or in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK.

It was introduced to take account of changes in technology such as the rise of the internet.