Special pleading against mass surveillance won't help anyonee

By Gareth Corfield, 21 Sep 2014
 
Earlier this week we discovered that not only are London's Metropolitan Police rampantly abusing data-snooping laws to hunt down and punish employees who talk to journalists, we also learned that they don't even bother counting how often they do this.
Police abuse of these powers came to light, after police sources who talked to the Sunnewspaper were traced and sacked thanks to the police secretly slurping a journalist's mobile phone records at the redtop.
 The ever-vigilant Press Gazette made a freedom of information request to the Met, asking them how often they use the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to legally scoop up the communications of journalists. Predictably the police refused to respond, claiming that because they didn't bother keeping records of how often they used RIPA powers, it would cost them too much to compile the data and answer the question.
 
The Register/ full article here/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/21/change_me_before_publishing/