Councils Snooping Powers to be Axed

Councils in England and Wales should not use surveillance powers for minor offences such as targeting gatherings of local anti-Christ Asbo hoodies congregating on street corners and mugging passers-by, the Second Home Secretary informed a reporter from the Expense Fiddler’s Gazette.
Jacqui Smith was speaking as the Home Office launched a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

The act allows the council’s Community Support sneaks to use hidden cameras and satellite surveillance to detect crimes such as putting actual kitchen waste into the green recycling wheelie bins, but councils have been accused of targeting minor offences like burglaries or stop and stab muggings.

The RIPA was introduced in 2000 as yet another sneaky tip toe step by step shuffle to usher in the Big Brother New World Order police surveillance state under the excuse it was necessary to fight crime and terrorism more effectively.
The act was later extended to allow local authorities' power-mad plastic plods to use some covert techniques such as peeping through keyholes and down chimneys to secure convictions of benefit fraud against widowed grandmothers claiming welfare benefits for their disabled tomcats.

Defending their position, the local council’s Community Support commander for Smegmadale-on-Sea, Frau Gruppenfuhrer Candida von Twatrot, a former welfare officer at Iraq’s Abu Grahib Prison, told the serious crimes correspondent from the Squirrel Skinner’s Gazette that in one case benefit investigators covertly filmed 95 year-old Gladys Muffitch, a benefits cheat who had claimed £10 in disability allowance payments for her budgerigar by falsely stating it had an arthritic wing disorder and couldn’t fly.

Frau Twatrot further cited the case of 83 year-old Gimpy Mozarella, an Albanian pikey immigrant who acted as a salaried pastor for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster yet claimed disability benefits due only having one leg.
An investigation conducted by the council’s Snitch n Grassers unit revealed he was actually a member of the local athletics club and routinely ran marathons of 25 miles by hopping on his one good leg.

Tory shadow Home Secretary Sir Marmalade Bogbrush told reporters that RPIA had become a ‘snooper’s charter’ and was being abused by local authorities to generate income to cover their capital losses brought about by idiotically investing council funds in dodgy tits-up Icelandic banks and other iffy financial derivative instruments.

The fact they were targeting individuals for such abhorrent crimes of allowing their dogs to shit on the pavement and not potty train them, or not complying with precise positioning of wheelie bins was an absolute abuse of the entire spirit of RIPA.

The Lib Dem shadow Minister for Marmite - Fellatia van der Gobble - told reporters : "Without reform, RIPA will continue to be New Labour’s snoopers charter. Surveillance powers should only be used to investigate serious crimes involving scallies or terrorists and require a magistrate's warrant."

The Local Government Association said its advice to councils clearly stated it was inappropriate to use the powers for less serious matters except in the most unusual and extreme circumstances such as the recent arrest of a homeless man who was living in a tree and shitting on passers-by.