The Birmingham Mail have published an article on the investigation into 'How much 'covert surveillance' of individuals has been conducted by Midlands councils?'The story mis-attributes quotes from James Ball's blog post analysing the data to myself (although I'm working on getting that corrected), but does add a useful response from the council: "A council spokeswoman said: “Birmingham City Council, like other local authorities, is using these powers to respond to residents’ complaints about issues such as fly-tippers, benefit fraudsters and rip-off merchants, which is precisely what the...

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The investigation into 'How much 'covert surveillance' of individuals has been conducted by Midlands councils?' has had its first response - from Birmingham City Council.The information has been provided in an Excel spreadsheet which Ian Duncan has helpfully exported into a public Google Spreadsheet.It's also been analysed by James Ball who picks out the following: I believe, at first glance - that Birmingham is compartively trigger happy, using powers granted by the act six times more than typical councils. Birmingham accounts for roughly a 60th of the UK’s population (pop c. 1 million). In 2007 (calendar year) there were...

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