Eavesdroppers, including stalkers and jealous spouses, are listening in on hundreds of thousands of private conversations in Britain every week because of a legal loophole, BBC News Online has discovered.
Telephone tapping without a valid warrant is illegal under both the 1998 Wireless Telegraphy Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
The law relating to intrusive surveillance devices – bugs – is less clear.
But it is legal to trade in taps, bugs and covert cameras, which explains the myriad websites, mail order businesses and spy shops.
And so on.
I’m a libertarian and I don’t quite know what I think about all that. I mean, I’m in favour of trades of all kinds, including lots of trades that other people aren’t in favour of. I think, for example, that it ought to be legal to buy a small and sneaky camera, if you want to buy one and if someone wants to sell you one. It’s a bit like guns. It’s what you do, and in this particular case it’s also where you do it, that matters, not the mere owning or buying of the thing itself.
But my attitude to posting on White Rose is: if it’s of interest and relevance, stick it up. I’m trying to give the customers here, that is to say the people the editors here want to be the customers here, what they want. No doubt they’ll straighten me out if I’m doing it wrong.
Telecom’s operators are generally large companies and so laws governing their behavior are easily enforced.
But banning anything that could be considered `spying equipment’ would a futile exercise in definition, as well as unenforceable. It might serve politicians by getting their name in print to call the current legal situation `ridiculous’, but I feel that’s it’s a good balance. Despite the angle that the news article has, these devices have many legitimate uses and banning their misuse is probably the best that the legal system can do.