Watchdog's warning on invasion of privacy

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said he was concerned that councils were using covert CCTV surveillance to monitor parents in school catchment area disputes under powers designed to assist in crime prevention and detection.

Use of such laws should be scrutinised to determine whether they were being used properly, he said.

"Many of the new laws that come into force every year in

the UK have implications for privacy at their heart," Mr Graham said.

"My concern is that after they are enacted there is no one looking back to see whether they are being used as intended, or whether the new powers were indeed justified in practice."

In his report to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, he said Government departments should have a legal requirement to scrutinise how the laws were being used in practice.

Sunset clauses, which allow all or part of a law to be terminated after a specific date, should also be considered, he said.

And private firms launching new technologies should consider privacy implications at the design stage or before they are released rather than as an afterthought.

Research by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academic experts, described "the proliferation of government databases, the increased use of CCTV and allied technology like automatic number plate recognition (ANPR)" and how these systems "can creep beyond their original function".

"Whether the trajectory of regulation and the critical awareness and vigilance of public opinion has matched the continued development of surveillance since 2006 is not certain," they said.

In August, Poole Borough Council admitted it spied on a family using laws passed to track criminals and terrorists to find out if they were lying about living in a school catchment area.