Snoops at local town halls across the country have been caught in the act, using the DVLA’s database to spy on people.
The Big Brother tactics emerged after councils were given the go ahead to use DVLA car registration records, strictly to track down owners of abandoned vehicles.
Instead, bureaucrats have been checking up on residents suspected of other offences that have nothing to do with motoring, in a blatant breach of the rules.
As a result, several councils have been banned from accessing the database and many more have received warnings after serious breaches were uncovered.
155 of the 432 local authorities allowed to use the database were audited, showing that the DVLA’s system was accessed 750 times a day in the 2009/10 financial year.
However, it was discovered that councils were using the system to try and find people for a variety of non motoring offences including horse fouling, littering and owning unruly/dangerous dogs.
Red coded warnings were sent by the DVLA to the chief executives of 56 authorities where serious breaches of the system had been uncovered. A further 99 also received warnings about abusing the system and 12, which failed to make the changes requested by the DVLA, have been banned altogether.
Campaign director of Big Brother Watch, Dylan Sharpe, said: "The outrageous and often illegal abuse of the DVLA database is yet another example of the way in which local councils will use any available means to keep a check on their residents.
"Law abiding people, or those suspected of very minor offences, are regularly having their personal lives exposed.
"They are being spied on for nonsensical reasons by these inflated town hall bureaucrats.
"The Government needs to rein in this sort of clandestine snooping as a matter of urgency."
Inspectors found councils breaking the rules by searching for registration plates with partial numbers, or by failing to log in and out of the database correctly.
Councils were given 24 hour access to the database to make it easier to find the owners of abandoned vehicles.
After a move by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the access was upgraded to help council staff investigate so called SDHp "environmental crimes".
A DVLA spokesman said: "We carry out regular audits of users to ensure they respect the terms and conditions of the contract and user agreements which cover this service. The reasons for suspension range from failure to respond to an audit letter to failure to comply with record keeping or data access requirements.
"In most cases, suspensions were related to mismanagement and record keeping, rather than inappropriate access."
The barred authorities are Nottingham City and Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, Corby in Northamptonshire, Brighton and Hove, Hastings and Lewes, all in East Sussex, Elmbridge in Surrey, Hull in East Yorkshire, Tower Hamlets in east London, Blackpool in Lancashire, Bedford in Bedfordshire and Stroud in Gloucestershire.
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