Under anti terrorism laws?

[joan k]

the Police were given the right to intercept phone calls and read emails, these rights were also given to Councils, which not many people realise. The Councils now seem to be abusing these powers for trivial things and nothing to do with terrorism. Therefore should the Government remove these powers from the Councils?.

[hogdigerdy]

The local councils have already been reprimanded for abusing there powers by central government only last month, the council in Poole Dorset used the powers to check on people with 2nd homes who used these to get there kids into better schools (as they were in the right catchment area) using taxpayers money to pay a private investigator company from Manchester to use 24hr surveillance to prove they were not in full time residence
right or not someone had to make the decision to spend 10s of thousands of pounds on stopping 1 or 2 kids going to the
school of there choice using powers that were never meant for this purpose (then next year our council tax will go up cos the council need more money to waste
edit
for our colonial cousins we have central government and local government, local government being referred to as 'city' or 'borough councils'

[Fonejacker]

Last week matey ...

This ALL came out and was done to death last week.

xxFJ

[billycrypto]

"Anti-terrorism" laws that allow blanket surveillance are unconstitutional and ineffective. These powers should be removed from the councils and from the police. There were warnings of the attacks of September 11, 2001, that should have been caught by existing laws if people were doing their jobs effectively. There was probably room for bureaucratic reorganization to improve efficiency, but the laws were effective.

We can choose to be a country that sacrifices individual freedom for some sense of security, but it won't work and it's not what the framers intended.

By the way, the vast majority of congress members who voted on the USA PATRIOT Act (that instituted these changes) didn't even read the bill.

Edit: I don't know about the UK laws, but the US laws and policies of the Atty. Gen. have set up "councils" too.