Tapping Loophole 'needs Closing'

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Shops like Spymaster in central London openly sell bugs and taps

Monday, 28 July, 2003

By Chris Summers

BBC News Online

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.

Their customers include businessmen, private investigators, suspicious spouses and even stalkers.

Conservative spokesman on home affairs, Patrick Mercer, said this loophole needed to be closed and people should need licences to buy any covert surveillance device.

What's the difference?

Telephone tapping: a transmitter inside the handset, socket, junction box or telephone exchange intercepts conversations on the line and sends them to a receiver

Bugging: a transmitter hidden inside, or disguised as, any number of domestic appliances picks up sound and sends it to a receiver

Under the Wireless Telegraphy Act any device transmitting a signal has to comply with strict guidelines from the Radiocommunications Agency, which is part of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

The pressure group Privacy International estimates more than 200,000 bugs and covert cameras are sold in Britain every year.

The group's director, Simon Davies, said: "The volume of intrusion is such that some action has to be taken.

"The government is effectively saying it's a free market for the invasion of people's privacy and that is the wrong signal to send."

He said the government could ban these devices outright - like it did the rape drug GHB - or, at the very least, license them in the same way as guns or dangerous chemicals.

Mr Mercer told BBC News Online: "I would certainly like to see these devices licensed. If MI5 are strictly controlled then surely the individual should not have access to this equipment without some of further scrutiny."

"If you are buying spying equipment you don't do it so you can hang it up and admire it. You are going to use it."

A DTI spokeswoman said it was illegal for anyone but the police (and security services) to tap a phone.

Asked why the sale of covert surveillance devices was not illegal, she said: "I have no idea."

Among cases Privacy International has been involved in are:

a woman who found bugs in her London flat, planted by her paranoid landlord, but could not afford to move home

a couple in Liverpool who discovered a bug in their home, which had been planted by a voyeuristic neighbour

a boy, aged 14, from Hackney, who left home after being spied on by his parents, who feared he had a drug problem. He was taken into care and his parents eventually split up after blaming each other.

A catalogue from The Spy Shop, Britain's leading manufacturer of such devices, includes bugs which can be hidden in electric sockets, pens, calculators, radios, watches and briefcases. They cost as little as £45.

The Spy Shop's spokesman, Dave Allen, told BBC News Online: "It is legal to buy and sell but the law is vague about whether you can use them.

'Paranoid'

"But most people who want them are so paranoid - that their wife's having an affair or their business partner is stealing from them - that they're willing to take the risk."

He said the police very rarely took action if someone complained of being bugged.

"Even if they find the transmitter they can't prove who installed it," said Mr Allen, many of whose customers claim to have been referred to him by the police.

Reg McKay, an investigative journalist who works closely with people involved in the Glasgow underworld, told BBC News Online he knew "certain players" who routinely used ex-SAS personnel who were well versed in surveillance techniques.

He said he knew of one former soldier who made "a good living" both bugging and phone tapping targets and conducting counter-surveillance sweeps.

'Ridiculous'

I visited Spymaster's shop in central London posing as a freelance journalist planning to bug hotel rooms and tap the phones of famous people.

I was given a demonstration of how a bug worked and information about types of phone taps.

When I asked about the legality of the devices, the assistant told me: "We are obliged to warn you about what is legal and what's not, but once you walk out of here it's up to you."

She said it was legal to tap your own phone, or that of your own company, but not someone else's.

Peter Heims, chairman of the Association of British Investigators (ABI), said the situation at the moment, whereby tapping devices could be sold but not used legally, was "ridiculous".

He would like to see them banned altogether.

Mr Heims said the 400 members of the ABI followed a strict code of ethics which forbade them from acting illegally, but he said: "There are quite a lot of dodgy private investigators who use these bugging devices."

A Home Office spokesman said the use of devices to carry out covert surveillance was not forbidden in itself.

"However, if such devices were to be used to intercept communications, then this may constitute an offence under section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Practices Act (RIPA)."

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