This Act is regularly being abused. Councils and others use covert surveillance on citizens that violates our Human Rights. This intrusion into our privacy is disproportionate to the actual risk we pose to society, it is used for instance to spy on residents to see if we are doing our rubbish properly. Nobody is checking or enforcing that this surveillance complies with RIPA. We cannot protect ourselves from this abuse because it is carried out covertly. The same holds true for MI5's indiscriminate use of phone and email interception. We can't even seek justice because we can't get the required proof, the evidence. And of course all this is carried out 'in the public interest', again it is impossible for us to prove that it is only in the government's interest, not the public's because the government decides what is 'in the public interest' when actually it is in their own interest - to retain power over us.

Because it goes against our rights (as in the Human Rights Act) and is a huge waste of public money which could be better targeted at real criminals.