After being asked how much our services costs the next question is always is covert surveillance legal in 2025?
The simple answer is yes but we do have some hoops to jump through to make sure we are going to provide court admissible evidence which is crucial to the evidence being useable. Let me break it down.
RIPA 2000 is the public authorities (think Police, MI5, DWP, HMRC and Councils) regulation and guidelines to how they are to carry out and authorise covert surveillance taking place.
RIPA means Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and 2000 is the year it was introduced into law.
This does not apply to private citizens and therefore DOES NOT apply to Private Investigators. We don’t need to be signed off by a judge to carry out surveillance.
Delta 74 Private Investigations and other agencies are not public authorities so unless we work for a public or local authority we are not bound by RIPA 2000.
That said, RIPA 2000 is a good legal framework which measures how far a covert surveillance can go taking the below keywords into consideration;
These are the same considerations we take into account when planning and accepting surveillance work from all of our clients.
The whole aim of employing us to carry out surveillance for you is to gather evidence and get intelligence for whatever the objective is. As private investigators we are no more powerful than Google Street View in where we can record from. All of our work has to be captured in the public space when recording covertly.
That means if someone is cheating and they go into a private property we cannot record into that property unless it is clearly visible with the naked eye and no attempt at privacy has been made.
This is in relation to The Human Rights Act under Article 8 – Right to Privacy.
Best way to think of it; if Google can picture it for Street View then we can record for you.
Following someone is not stalking them. Let me explain.
To be stalked you would need to know the person stalking you is there and as such you would feel harassed and distressed.
We carry out covert surveillance by following people without their knowledge. If they do not know we are there they are unable to feel anything about it. They can’t feel harassed or distressed as they do not know.
If we are compromised during our surveillance we are to stop immediately and cease operations.
This answers towards the question is covert surveillance legal in 2025 – Yes ✅
Once we have taken an instruction from a client to carry out surveillance we do have some paperwork to complete and file internally. This paperwork are tests to measure;
If, once we have completed our paperwork the tests are not passed then we cannot carry out the surveillance. After years of doing it I can know from the initial phone call if the objectives set will pass or if they need to be tested. The paperwork is still done as a process.
These processes are all in place to ensure we stay legal whilst carrying out our work. This ensures that our client is protected legally, as are we and that the evidence will be admissible in court, if needed.
There is and has been talks of the private investigation industry being regulated and was on Theresa May’s agenda years ago but nothing has happened since.
Whilst it is unregulated, it is still legal to carry covert surveillance in the way that we do it in 2025 and will be in 2026.
As always, thanks for reading and take care!
Dan
