Mom Tailed in School Registration Case Pursues Privacy Complaint
Suspected of improperly registering her child at a local school in Poole, England, 40-year-old Jenny Paton became the target of an undercover surveillance mission. Authorities obtained her phone records and tailed her for weeks as she went about her daily activities, driving her daughter to school.
As it turned out, she had given school officials her correct address, and her daughter’s registration was accepted, reports the New York Times. However, she is now fighting back with a complaint to a regulatory tribunal over what she sees as an unjustified invasion of her privacy under the sweeping surveillance authority given to local jurisidictions by the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
Britain is considered something of a ground zero for such surveillance; closed-circuit television cameras, for instance, are reportedly far more ubiquitous than they are in the United States.
Authorities should have asked her for an explanation of her situation before putting her under surveillance, Paton contends. And she also objects to a lack of information about what is now in government files about her family. When she asked, for example, whether she now has a criminal record, she couldn’t get an answer.
“Does our privacy mean anything?” Paton asks the Times rhetorically. “I haven’t had a drink for 20 years, but there is nothing that has brought me closer to drinking than this case.”
