Article

Criminology & Criminal Justice

12(3) 275­–288
Covert surveillance and © The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895811432014
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Bethan Loftus
University of Manchester, UK

Benjamin Goold
University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract
This article draws upon research from the first ethnographic field study of covert policing
conducted in the United Kingdom, and seeks to shed light on how covert officers carry out
their surveillance work. In particular, it demonstrates how officers attempt to blend into their
surroundings and render their work invisible in order to intrude into the daily lives of those
people considered suspect. In so doing, we highlight some hitherto unnoticed aspects – or
‘invisibilities’ – of policing, and show that the surveillance strategies used by law enforcement are
increasingly embedded in the most mundane aspects of social life. In contrast to the processes
of mass surveillance that are typically the focus of surveillance scholars, the article serves as a
reminder that the surveillance powers of the State are vastly intensified when individual members
of the public are regarded as suspects by the police.

Keywords
covert policing, incongruity, social control, surveillance

Introduction
There is little doubt that surveillance, in its various forms, has become a routine, every-
day occurrence in late modern societies. For often – but not always – mundane reasons,
numerous agencies have an enthusiastic interest in collecting the personal information of
various populations, before classifying and cataloguing such information. In discussing
the changing face of surveillance, scholars increasingly identify a shift from the indi-
vidualized surveillance that characterized the first half of the 20th century to the mass

Corresponding author:
Bethan Loftus, Simon Fellow, Manchester Centre for Regulation, Governance and Security, University of
Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Email: bethan.loftus@manchester.ac.uk

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276 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

surveillance of late modern societies (Lyon, 2001; see also Jones, 2005). Whereas in the
past the surveillance powers of the State were directed only at particular individuals who
were deemed to be at risk or undeserving of trust, today it would seem that surveillance
powers are directed against everybody. In other words, the surveillance that was once
reserved for the suspect or deviant has become extended to cover the majority of the
population (Lyon, 2001; see also Deflem, 2004).
Driving the obsession with surveillance is anxiety around potential future risk
behaviours. Zedner (2009) succinctly describes the pre-crime world as one in which
surveillance technologies, data collection and the prediction of future threats are
promulgated as the answer to insecurity. In other words, that the surveillance society
has marched hand-in-hand with the security society. The import of risk rationale and
surveillance technologies is a source of ongoing change in policing, and increasingly
underpins policing discourse and practice. As Maguire (2000) explains, there has in
recent years been widespread advocacy and adoption of proactive and intelligence-led
approaches to crime control. Such approaches target particular people, locations and
behaviours in a systematic way and draw upon an arsenal of sophisticated sources of
intelligence and surveillance techniques. At a theoretical level, such developments can
be understood as part of a burgeoning multi-institutional project to assess and manage
risk, itself a response to the feelings of fear and insecurity which are endemic to the
fragmented communities of late modernity (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Garland,
2001; Young, 1999). Yet, while there is a consistent commitment to focus proactively
on the ‘hardcore’ of persistent offenders, it would seem that covert surveillance is not
confined to the most serious threats, such as international terrorism and organized
crime. Rather, covert operations are increasingly directed against relatively petty
offences, such as drug taking and vehicle crime (Sharpe, 2002).
As Manning (2003) demonstrates, the practice of policing conveys an important
communicative function. When their legitimacy is under threat, the police draw upon a
range of symbolic representations – flashing blue lights, distinctive uniform and public
arrests – to stabilize their authority and organizational relations. This way of viewing
policing reveals an obvious subtext about crime control, and is pertinent for the visible
street policing the vast majority of us are so familiar with. There is, however, another
strand of policing that does not want to be rendered visible. Covert policing is an
extremely hidden, concealed and invisible form of social practice. Yet, while the culture
and conduct of uniformed police has always been a centrepiece of criminological
scholarship, our understanding of the police use of deceptive and covert means remains
profoundly undeveloped. The pioneering book in the field is Undercover by Gary Marx
(1988). In addition to providing an illuminating discussion of the various covert investi-
gative methods adopted by law enforcement agencies, Marx (1988: 210) convincingly
demonstrates that undercover policing is just one extension of what he calls the ‘new
surveillance’. However, this work falls tantalizingly short on a number of fronts. First,
it was written over 20 years ago and accordingly reflects policing contexts of a much
earlier – and different – milieu. As noted, within the post-9/11 world social unease about
crime, coupled with the ostensibly relentless pursuit of security, increasingly defines
crime control agendas (Zedner, 2009), as well as the covert policing mindset (Sharpe,
2002). Second, the American focus of Marx’s work cannot be easily transposed onto the

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Loftus and Goold 277

British policing landscape. Unlike the USA, covert methods do not have an established
tradition in British law enforcement (Maguire and John, 1996). Finally, the empirical
strategy adopted by Marx was not intended to be ethnographic. Although his study
provides a fascinating insight into the policy and practice environment, the ground-level
realities of covert policing, which can be much more accurately captured through
dedicated periods of first-hand observation, are essentially overlooked. The deficiency in
knowledge about the inner-world of covert policing has no doubt been encouraged by the
legal complexities that surround this sphere of police activity (Field and Pelser, 1998), as
well as the police desire to protect the methods and craft that are essential to covert work
(Barefoot, 1998). Nevertheless, we would question whether it is possible to continue to
make claims about the practice and culture of the police when there is a crucial aspect
of their work that we know so very little about.
Although definitions vary, covert investigation generally refers to actions of which
the suspect is assumed to be unaware and which infringes upon the private life of the
suspect (Sharpe, 2002). While it incorporates deceptive tactics, such as the use of
undercover police officers and civilian informants, covert surveillance also includes
various electronic forms, such as telephone tapping, email monitoring, video and audio
surveillance. Unlike undercover investigation which can involve deception and provo-
cation on the part of the operative (Ross, 2007), the latter methods are often depicted as
having a passive quality (Brodeur, 2002). Of course, covert surveillance also incorpo-
rates what we may imagine as the basics of scrutiny – simply following, watching and
listening to people without their awareness. It is well known that police officers
routinely monitor and infiltrate activist groups and those considered to be terrorists
(Bunyan, 1977) and it is worth emphasizing that covert policing is ultimately performed
on behalf of the State by anonymous agents. In this way, covert and undercover policing
may be better described as political policing (Brodeur, 2002; Gill, 1996). Broadly
speaking, there are two types of covert investigation (Marx, 1988). In the first, the goal
is to encourage the commission of an offence. Typically, intelligence shows a pattern of
crime, but the specific identity of the offender is unknown. A broad net is therefore cast
to see who will take the ‘bait’. In the second, police believe an identified person has
been carrying out, or planning to carry out, an offence and an operation is mounted to
see if the envisaged evidence can be gathered.
In recent years, there have been important developments within the world of covert
policing which invite examination. First, there is evidence to suggest that the use of cov-
ert surveillance strategies is growing, particularly in countries like the United Kingdom.
Because police organizations are required by statute to obtain a written authorization for
most forms of covert activity, there are now records on the amount of surveillance that is
being undertaken and how it is growing. For instance, according to the annual report by
the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, almost 19,000 surveillance authorizations
were granted in the year 2008–2009. Thus we can say with some confidence that, at any
one time, the majority of police forces are engaged in some form of covert surveillance.1
And while the trend towards covert policing can be attributed largely by the shift towards
proactive policing, it should be remembered that it is also instigated as an investigative
reaction to a crime (Maguire, 2000). Other developments driving the popularity of covert
policing include domestic and international pressures arising from global terrorism and

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278 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

serious organized crime, less visible forms of illegal behaviour, as well as a dramatic
expansion of technologies for surveillance (see Aas et al., 2009; Hoogenboom, 1998).
Second, there has also been an expansion in the legal frameworks that surround covert
policing. As Maguire and John (1996) make clear, there has historically been very little
formal regulation of police surveillance in the UK, partly because there was a high level
of trust in the police. However, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, or
RIPA, has since established a new framework for regulating the powers of public bodies
to carry out surveillance and covert investigations. Aside from meeting the needs of
European Union law, the creation of RIPA also reflects a growing concern within govern-
ment and law enforcement circles about the ethics of covert policing. As a consequence
of RIPA, there is now guidance about the conditions under which deceptive methods are
justifiable, the kinds of limits that should be imposed and the most effective ways of
preventing their abuse by the police.2 Part II of RIPA identifies three key categories
of covert activity. The first is intrusive surveillance. Intrusive surveillance is the covert
monitoring of a residential premises or private vehicle, and typically involves the use of
surveillance devices such as hidden cameras or listening devices. Except in the most
urgent cases, intrusive surveillance can only be undertaken with the prior approval of the
Office of Surveillance Commissioner. The second category is directed surveillance,
which is covert but not intrusive. Directed surveillance is usually undertaken for a spe-
cific investigation or operation in order to obtain private information about a particular
person. The surveillance must be both necessary and proportionate to the purpose it
seeks to achieve, and can be authorized by a senior police officer. The final category is
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS), and refers the establishment of a personal or
other relationship with a person for the covert purpose of obtaining information. In each
of these cases, the legislation aims to ensure that there is a clear legal basis for the use of
covert surveillance methods by the police, and that such tactics do not amount to an
unlawful infringement of the right to privacy contained in Article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights. The apparent increase and growing intensity of covert
policing has stimulated a flurry of discussion, both within and beyond the United
Kingdom (Fijnaut and Marx, 1995). Yet, while there has been much theorizing about the
desirability and regulation of covert policing within western liberal democracies, there
remains a pressing need for empirical research into the day-to-day practices of covert
police surveillance. How are covert operations planned, authorized and carried out?
What does the use of covert tactics reveal about the logics of policing, as well as the
nature of contemporary surveillance?
In this article we draw upon research derived from the first ethnographic field study
of covert policing in order to illustrate how covert officers accomplish their surveillance
work.3 Although our fieldwork is currently ongoing, we want to explore one emerging
aspect of our research. In keeping with the topic of this special issue, the focus on
everyday encounters with surveillance is particularly relevant for us. A prominent
theme to emerge during our fieldwork so far is how officers manipulate the environment
and everyday objects in order to intrude into the personal lives of those people under
surveillance. In particular, we show how covert officers attempt to blend into their sur-
roundings and render their work invisible. While highlighting some hitherto unnoticed
aspects of policing and social control, we also demonstrate that surveillance practices are
increasingly embedded into the most mundane areas of social life.

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Loftus and Goold 279

Our research takes place in what we shall call Summershire Police Service, one of the
largest constabularies in the United Kingdom.4 At present Summershire Police Service is
undertaking numerous authorized covert operations, including the deployment of Covert
Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS), static and mobile surveillance, various forms of
electronic surveillance, as well as the creative deployment of ‘sting’ operations.5 The
empirical investigation is unique in that it involves direct observation of new and ongoing
covert police operations in the field. Having now spent 18 months accompanying officers
who plan, authorize and conduct covert operations, it is no exaggeration to state that
we have had an unprecedented insight into the inner-world of this particularly sensitive
aspect of contemporary law enforcement.6

Covert Policing and (In)Congruity

To claim that officers involved in covert policing are concerned to blend into the back-
ground and not stand out is perhaps an obvious statement. In this article, however, we are
interested in providing a sociological account of the processes by which covert police
officers construct and manage a particular social order for the purposes of carrying out
surveillance. To this end, we are interested in exploring how covert policing is socially
organized and how officers negotiate the dilemmas involved in carrying out their work.
One of the ways we have come to understand this is through a classic essay written by
Harvey Sacks (1972) in which he describes the methods police officers use to locate
suspicious persons. In particular, Sacks (1972: 286) suggested that in looking for suspi-
cious persons the police learn to treat their geographical domain as a ‘territory of normal
appearances’. The task of the officer is to become sensitive to any variances in what he
terms ‘background expectancies’ (1972: 287) – that is, the seen, but usually unnoticed,
characteristics of the surroundings. In relation to police suspicion, officers become
attuned to people and events that do not fit in, or are out of place with, the surroundings.
However, while the police are intensely oriented to the improper appearances that people
and events present, Sacks also reminds us that perpetrators of crime will present a ‘front’
so that their appearance will be treated as normal. In this way, the police have to recog-
nize people who have a concern not to look like they are involved in crime. This occupa-
tional commonsense, we suggest, can be likened to how officers involved in covert
policing relate to their work and the social world in which they ‘do’ covert policing. In
particular, the police use a mirror image of this incongruity method in their covert work.
Whereas ordinary uniformed officers are peculiarly sensitive to background expectan-
cies being out of place, the job of the covert surveillance officer is to blend into, and
indeed create, such background expectancies. In order to do their covert work, it is criti-
cal that the police get to know the daily routines of the person under surveillance (the
‘subject’) and the wider environment in which they operate. The police can become best
attuned to the constancies in the background expectancies – that is, normal appearances
– by spending time at the place in question. In covert policing, this process is called
researching or lifestyling. The aim of this process is to obtain basic information on those
suspected of crime, including their addresses, any associates, work details, where they
socialize and so on. Once enough information is gathered, the police can then begin to
plan the surveillance operation. In what follows, we present a thematic analysis of

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280 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

various forms of covert policing, and explore how they illustrate this basic concern with
blending in and the need to reflect – rather than disturb – the background expectations of
both the public and the targets of surveillance.

Trap room
The first theme is about surveillance that takes place within domestic settings, and which
is embedded in the most mundane areas of social life. A current trend within policing is
that of tackling statistically significant ‘volume’ crimes, such as high incidences of theft
and burglary. Once enough information is gathered about the where and when of repeat
offences, the police may then create an environment – or ‘stage’ – designed to lure sus-
pected criminals into committing a particular offence. We can take the example of a trap
room, or bait room as it is also commonly known. In the following instance, the officers
decided to set up a trap room at a university hall of residence following complaints that
they had been the victim of several break-ins where students had their laptops and other
items stolen. The following fieldnote extract demonstrates how officers carefully dressed
the room so it would appear to be occupied by a young female student:

Rick, Greg and Samantha explained that they were going to be heading over to the hall of
residence this afternoon to set up a ‘Trap Room’. In this room would be a £1000 laptop with a
tracking device hidden inside it. The plan was to display the laptop on a desk near an open
window in the hope that the thief would strike. A lamp with a hidden camera inside the bulb
would be placed on the desk and, sensing movement, would take a photograph of the person
who had opened the window ... We arrived at the halls of residence in an unmarked transit van
and parked to the rear. Entering a narrow corridor we went into the second room on the right. It
was typical student room – grotty decor, a sink, couple of shelves, bed, wardrobe and desk. It
was completely devoid of any personal articles. Greg explained that the task was to ‘dress’ the
room as though it were being occupied by a female student. In the meantime, Matt would set
up the cameras and arrange the technical side of things. Matt moved the desk near to the
window and put the lamp and the laptop on it. He made sure the window was slightly ajar.
Meanwhile, Greg and Samantha emptied the bin bags and boxes containing all the items in
keeping with a female room. Samantha and her colleagues set about dressing the room in the
following manner:

• The bed was made up in a pink and white duvet set

• Books, DVDs and CDs were placed on the shelf
• Dresses and other feminine clothing were hung in the wardrobe and some items were delib-
erately strewn on the bed (‘the room can’t be too neat. It is a student’s after all’)
• Perfume, moisturiser, toothbrush and toothpaste were placed by the sink
• Several posters of boy bands and other pop groups were blue tacked to the wall

While this was going on, everyone was whispering and remained silent if they heard anybody
in the corridor. ... All in all, the room looked extremely convincing.

Here, the covert facilitation of an offence relies heavily on creating an environment that
correlates with the background expectancies of the targets of surveillance. Pivotal to

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Loftus and Goold 281

manufacturing a credible scene is a shrewd awareness of how things should and should
not look – and, of course, meticulous attention to detail. The principles underpinning trap
rooms are likewise evident in the case of ‘trap cars’. Flashy vehicles, with expensive
items deliberately left on show, are fitted with surveillance devices and parked in areas
that have experienced high rates of vehicle crime. Frequently, they are parked in poor,
rundown housing estates – a tactic which raises several questions about entrapment and
whether or not the police should be in the business of tempting the weak (see Marx,
1988). Should the vehicle, or items from the vehicle, be stolen, officers are immediately
alerted through a trigger switch. From a police perspective, this tactic is extremely
successful. In most cases, the police are able to locate the offender and recover the stolen
property.
Increasingly, surveillance devices are designed to look like ordinary objects and are
located in everyday situations to enhance their surveillance potential (Jones, 2005). What
is important is that these are items that are prevalent everywhere and do not look suspi-
cious in the right setting. In Summershire officers engaged in covert activities embedded
a range of surveillance technology into inanimate objects. For example, in the case of
distraction burglaries, where a bogus caller gives false or misleading details in order to
enter a premise and steal from the (usually elderly) owner, Summershire officers use
devices that masquerade as mundane items. In one instance, a tiny camera is placed
inside a run-of-the-mill clock on the wall facing the door in an attempt to record the
distraction burglar(s) in action. Different officers may consider the suitability of a par-
ticular object differently, and those involved in covert work use their creativity to assess
the best way to carry out the surveillance. What is important for our purposes is that these
otherwise inanimate objects become transformed by the police from mundane items to
those endowed with deliberate crime control and surveillance properties.

Street theatre
It is often stated that our everyday physical environment has become littered with the
tools and techniques of surveillance, and what this reveals is the strong spatial character
of contemporary surveillance (Jones, 2005; Lyon, 2007; Zedner, 2009). From our
research it is clear that police covert surveillance is not confined to buildings or other
enclosed environments, but also extends into public spaces. In carrying out their work,
covert officers are at pains to make sure the work they do goes unnoticed, as the follow-
ing extract demonstrates:

Paul wanted to make sure that a camera focused on a subject’s house was still working. He
would need to drive passed the house with the receiver kit. ... As we approached the large gated
property Paul slowed the van down and discreetly pointed to one of the street lamps directly
opposite. ‘The camera is in that lamp’, he explained.

Although the apparatus of covert police investigation infuses the daily lives of its
subject, it is pertinent that, for the most part, those subjects are entirely oblivious to those
surveillance practices. The same point can also be made in relation to ordinary members
of the public who may inadvertently wander through everyday spaces and environments

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282 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

completely unaware that they have been caught in the net of a covert police investigation.
The success of surveillance operations involves a reinterpretation of traditional policing
and a careful recrafting of the environment. As alluded to in the above fieldnote, covert
policing can be described as a form of street theatre. Officers use props, design scripts
and ‘act out’ in order to do their surveillance work and gather information. Covert offic-
ers also engineer public scenes in an attempt to control the target of their surveillance
work. For instance, in order to get a subject car into an accessible area for the purposes
of fitting tracking, or other surveillance, devices, officers may use various means to
control the flow of traffic. What instances such as these also demonstrate is the manner
in which the practices of social control continue to be subtly embedded into environmen-
tal fixtures (Shearing and Stenning, 1996). It is also worth noting here what Sacks (1972)
refers to as the ‘time-ordered’ character of normal appearances. The police know that the
meaning of an event is given credence by the time it occurs, and they are required to have
the closest awareness of the constancies and variances at that time for the place of focus.
This was borne out in the fieldwork when covert police carried out a tactic called
‘controlled delivery’ – in which they intercept a package containing drugs and, dressed
as a courier, deliver it to the person it was intended for. On one late shift observed by
members of the research team, the delivery was postponed until the following day
because officers knew that it would look ‘out of place’ for a courier to deliver a package
late at night. An essential part of the planning phase in operations is to construct a
plausible cover story. Surveillance officers very much create a scene which, to the
suspect and public, would not look out of the ordinary.

Presentation of officer
As Sacks (1972) observes, from the police perspective, criminals regulate their appear-
ance so they do not appear incongruent or out of the ordinary. More often than not, police
involved in carrying out covert surveillance carefully craft and manage their own appear-
ance to ensure that it corresponds with that of the subject. Officers often disguise their
own identity, or use an assumed identity, for the purposes of gaining the trust of targeted
individuals in order to gain information or evidence (Marx, 1988; Ross, 2007). This
invariably involves changing the colour and style of their hair, to wearing clothes that
enable them to merge with the criminal environment they are attempting to access. With
the mobile surveillance officers we accompanied, it was very important that they looked
plain, and had no striking or distinguishing features. One supervisor told us that mem-
bers of the team could not afford to be too attractive or, by the same token, too unattractive.
In short, they have to look like ‘your average Joe’. Yet while bodily appearance is imper-
ative, so too is the language officers use. During the course of the fieldwork, we came
across a Test Purchase Officer (TPO) who made a recorded phone call to a massage
parlour in order to gain evidence that they were selling sexual services. An essential part
of this front was not only to familiarize himself with the repertoire of services offered
but, moreover, the exact and explicit language used by sex workers to describe these
services. As the next fieldnote extract demonstrates, issues of social class and gender are
pivotal to presenting a plausible front:

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Loftus and Goold 283

Last night before leaving the station, John told me [the researcher] to dress scruffily when I
came back tomorrow morning. He explained that the job was to covertly walk around a market
on the Brickworks Housing Estate, and I would stick out like a sore thumb if I wore smart
clothes. As I walked into the Surveillance Team office wearing old jeans, a black hooded jacket
and my hair tied back into a ponytail, Peter humorously greeted me with, ‘Yeah – you’ll pass
the Chav test.’7 ... At the briefing, John gave everybody further details of the job in hand. Police
intelligence suggested that two men, whose identities were yet unknown, were attending the
market every month selling a mixture of stolen property from the back of a blue transit van,
including power drills, bicycles and laptop computers. ... John thought it would look more
natural for a couple to be shopping at a market together, and so he paired up Lucy with Derek
and me with Greg.

Appearing ‘natural’ was a theme which dominated the covert operations we observed.
This basic concern to reflect, rather than disturb, backdrop expectations was operation-
alized both in the context of the outward appearance of individual officers and in the
environments which they staged. In our view, the former point presents an important
affront to the polemics of policing. As Van Maanen (1978) demonstrates, much policing
relies or depends upon the authority of a uniform. Yet as we have seen, one of the most
notable exceptions to uniformed duty is when the basics of policing is turned on its head –
that is, from a visible spectacle to an invisible presence. We return to these broader
concerns in our concluding remarks.

Operational dilemmas
As we have seen, carrying out surveillance requires intimate knowledge of how things
should look. But, of course, it also requires extensive knowledge of how things should
not look. In the ‘trap room’ incident discussed earlier, it is worth noting that in dressing
the room officers initially made several mistakes. For instance, one of the male officers
pinned posters of semi-naked women to the wall before realizing that such pictures
would more than likely be out of place in a room belonging to a female student. Likewise,
computer games were initially placed on the bookshelf, but were swiftly removed when
officers realized that the absence of any computer console on which to play the games
might provoke suspicion from the expected burglar. As a consequence, it is imperative
that the cultural knowledge of covert officers is oriented towards being able to distin-
guish accurately between congruity and incongruity. In the following instance, officers
placed a covert audio device in a police station. A woman had been arrested on suspicion
of abusing her four-year-old son and was currently in custody. The officer in charge of
the case suspected that her husband was also party to the abuse, and had contacted
Surveillance Team to see if they could help get evidence of their involvement. The idea
was to release the woman from custody and ask her husband to come and collect her
from the station. When the father arrived, he would be directed into a ‘waiting room’ and
then his wife would be brought in. The arresting officer would make an excuse to leave
the room, telling the couple he would be back in five minutes. The expectation was that,
in a moment of panic, the woman would blurt out something that incriminated them both
in the abuse. Along with providing another insight into the processes covert officers
employ to ‘dress’ particular environments, the fieldnote extract presented below also

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284 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

demonstrates officers’ acute awareness of this distinction between congruity and

incongruity:

We entered the room to be used for the operation. It was a large office just off the custody block.
Entering, Carl expressed his concern that the room had ‘police territory’ written all over it and
that he would need to transform it into something resembling a cosy waiting room. While this
involved removing the computer, telephone and filing cabinet, the greatest elephant in the room
was the bright yellow sign warning visitors ‘You Are Being Recorded’.

The decisional problem faced by surveillance officers is to maximize the likelihood of

gaining evidence or intelligence without drawing attention to themselves or their work.
Getting ‘burned’ is a constant source of anxiety, and makes the need to have the closest
awareness of congruity even more pressing, as the next fieldnote illustrates:

For the second day running, the subject had entered the woods with his two dogs and was
talking on a mobile phone. Catherine turned to me and explained that they thought the subject
was making these trips to the woods in order to speak to his criminal associates in private.
Meanwhile, David from Surveillance Team was not too far behind the subject, but was holding
back. He thought that it would ‘look weird’ for a lone male without a dog to be out walking in
dense woodland.

As many officers have explained to us, the qualities required to create and maintain
background expectancies is not something that can be taught in a training classroom.
Rather, like much policing generally (Loftus, 2009), the art of covert surveillance is
learned through on-the-job socialization. Covert officers face several other operational
dilemmas in their work. First, cover stories are subject to visual and verbal challenges. A
scenario was routinely described to us in which an officer was attempting to fit a covert
device inside a house. Although his clothing and vehicle conformed with that of an
electrician, he was nevertheless unable to answer properly several unwanted electric
questions asked by a neighbour. Second, officers know that they have to up their game
when dealing with subjects who are surveillance aware. Knowing that they have
previously been the targets of police surveillance, we have observed subjects changing
their clothes and vehicles several times a day to disorient officers.

Concluding Remarks
In this article, we have explored the ways in which some key aspects of covert police
surveillance are socially organized, and how officers negotiate some of the dilemmas
involved in carrying out their work. In so doing, we have drawn upon fieldnotes
recently derived from the first comprehensive observational study of covert policing.
We would like to end our discussion by reflecting on what the themes discussed here
may reveal about the nature of contemporary policing and surveillance, and also by
raising some early normative questions about the broader legal and ethical issues such
covert practices reveal.
We can begin by illuminating the covert in policing. Covert surveillance is the
clandestine collection and analysis of information about persons, or put another way,

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Loftus and Goold 285

methods of watching or listening without being detected. Surveillance operations are

commonly preceded by reconnaissance. Earlier, we questioned whether policing scholar-
ship can continue to make claims about the practice and culture of the police when there
is a significant aspect of their work that has evaded steady theoretical and empirical
attention. It seems reasonable to reflect on how the logics of visible street policing differ
to those of a covert presence. Police are usually conceived as uniformed and as acting as
preventative agents, or in a response to crimes. They are also thought of in relation to
face-to-face interactions with members of the public and those considered suspect. Thus
the practice of policing has a deliberate spectacle quality to it, with officers routinely
performing a visually striking display of their authority and power (Manning, 2003; see
also Bittner, 1967). Yet, these embedded polemics of policing differ remarkably in the
covert context. Above all, covert officers are no longer visible symbols of state authority
and have to relinquish most of what they have ever known and experienced about their
previous uniformed role. Although uniformed and plain-clothed officers share with their
covert counterparts the desire to investigate crimes and catch those persons suspected
of breaking the law, there exists a whole subterranean world of policing which goes by
unnoticed and concealed. In this sense, policing is an increasingly secretive enterprise.
This also points to some interesting dynamics on the practice of secrecy and culture
within police organizations in that covert policing is hidden from both the public and
other police officers. As the fieldnotes discussed here make clear, the occupational com-
monsense inherent to surveillance work reveals a distinctly erudite working culture
which operates in isolation from the clichéd cultural expressions of uniformed police that
have been the focus of much scholarship (see Loftus, 2009; Reiner, 2000).
Although our primary aim in this article has been to provide a preliminary sociological
account on the social organization – the ‘doing’ – of covert policing, we think that the
operational tactics discussed in this article invite a reconsideration of two well-accepted
tenets of the mainstream surveillance and policing literature. First, the idea that mass
surveillance is now the dominant paradigm is supplemented by the fact that police
officers regularly use the environment around them and everyday objects to tap into the
personal lives of those people considered suspect. This suggests that the qualitative focus
of police surveillance – far from being general in nature – is both highly targeted and
deeply embedded in the most mundane aspects of social life. In discussing the changing
face of surveillance, scholars such as Lyon (2001) have rightly identified a shift from
individualized surveillance that characterized the first half of the 20th century to the
mass surveillance of late modern societies. Whereas in the past, the surveillance powers
of the State were directed only at particular individuals who were deemed to be suspect,
those surveillance powers are today directed at whole categories of people and carried
out by a range of public and private actors. One of the most significant developments,
therefore, is how the surveillance that was once reserved for the suspect or deviant has
become extended to cover the majority of the population. Yet, as convincing as the mass
surveillance thesis is, our research demonstrates that specific, targeted surveillance
against individuals continues to be a central aspect of contemporary social control, and
that it is vastly intensified when such individuals are suspected of a crime by the police.
Although technological advancements have shaped penal culture to the extent that the
effectiveness of traditional bureaucratic methods of control has greatly increased (Aas,

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286 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(3)

2004), it can also be argued that the same technological changes have enabled the police
to maintain and intensify their traditional focus on individualized surveillance. We could
also add here the increasing popularity of social networking sites as a further avenue for
covert police investigation. Our analysis of this aspect of policing is currently in its early
stages, but an initial assessment of the fieldnotes suggests that covert police officers treat
the virtual world in much the same way as they treat the ‘normal’ world.
Second, the research discussed in this article highlights just how little is known about
the daily realities of covert policing, or its implications for our understanding of the
police in late modern states like the United Kingdom. What kind of state power is being
exercised? The answer, as Marx (1988) alluded to all those years ago, points to uncom-
fortable questions about secrecy and democracy. The fact that the targets of covert sur-
veillance are unaware they are the focus of such intense, yet invisible, policing undermines
one of the most regularly promulgated philosophies of British policing. As Reiner (2000)
reminds us, policing by consent has always been grounded in the idea of preventive
policing through a uniformed presence, rather than a secret police presence. From a sus-
pect point of view, covert policing is inherently different from normal policing because
the safeguards that usually accompany overt justice processes are entirely absent.
Furthermore, since the work of Marx, it has become something of a cliché to claim that
covert policing is in some sense a ‘necessary evil’ – at the same time useful and threaten-
ing to the rule of law. This begs the question of how one evaluates the success of covert
operations. If covert operations do not always produce ‘results’ (in the form of arrests,
prevention of crime, retrieval of assets and so on) then we might ask what is the purpose
of them? The necessary evil argument may be easier to digest if covert surveillance is
reserved as an exceptional policing strategy. Yet the extension of systematic proactive
methods, which were previously used in the investigation of major and organized crime,
into realms such as petty persistent offending suggests that the necessary evil thesis
needs to be reconsidered. More often than not, covert surveillance is characterized by
much waiting around and recording the mundane legal behaviour of individual targets. If
we are to be convinced that covert policing is indeed necessary, then the broader question
becomes whether current mechanisms designed to regulate covert policing strike an
appropriate balance between the protection of civil liberties on the one hand, and the
demands of crime prevention and security on the other. These are just some of the broader
concerns that our future work will endeavour to address.
Given the amount of attention that has been paid to the steady expansion of mass
surveillance in recent years, it is easy to forget that a great deal of state surveillance
continues to be directed at individuals rather than categories of people. Equally,
although technologies such as CCTV have transformed the policing of urban spaces, it
remains the case that highly directed covert operations, such as those described in this
article, are a key feature of late modern policing. Moreover, the intensity of surveillance
that characterizes the targeting of specific individuals raises crucial questions about the
limits of police power, and highlights some of the legal and ethical challenges that face
officers engaged in covert work. In order to understand properly the role of surveillance
in society, we need to know more about the closed world of covert policing and its
moral significance. It is our hope that this project will eventually make a substantial
contribution to that understanding.

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Loftus and Goold 287

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Dr Shane Macgiollabhui deserves special
thanks for all of his assistance and hard work during the fieldwork.

Notes
1. Of course, we could also add that the practice of covert policing is no longer the exclusive
domain of the police. The use of covert tactics by members and organizations within the
private security industry is both widespread and not unproblematic (Gill and Hart, 1997;
see also O’Reilly and Ellison, 2006).
2. There is, however, a countervailing view which depicts RIPA as an enabling piece of legislation
that presents a grave threat to civil liberties (Bhatt, 2006).
3. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for
providing the funds necessary to conduct this research. The opinions expressed here are solely
those of the authors and not of the Council.
4. For obvious reasons, the names of the police organization and covert units have been changed.
Likewise, the names of all officers in the empirical section are fictional.
5. A sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch red-handed a person committing
a crime. A typical sting will involve a police officer playing the role of a criminal partner or
potential victim and will acquiesce with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's
wrongdoing.
6. As is usual in this type of research, each field researcher is responsible for keeping an up-to-
date research diary and producing a comprehensive set of fieldnotes for each observational
assignment.
7. This is derogatory term used widely by much of the British public to describe people from the
residual ‘underclass’ (see Jones, 2011).

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Biographies
Bethan Loftus is currently Simon Fellow at the Manchester Centre for Regulation,
Governance and Security, University of Manchester. Her research focuses upon the
sociology of policing and security – in particular: police cultures; covert policing and
surveillance; the operation and governance of private security; and border enforcement.

Benjamin Goold is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty

of Law. His major research interests include privacy rights, the use of surveillance
technologies by the police and intelligence communities, and the rhetoric and language
of human rights.

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