The leading practical guide for anyone working in covert investigation. Containing new case law and updates to all the relevant legislation and codes of practice, the book is designed to help officers improve the quality of RIPA applications and ensure they are made in appropriate circumstances.

Examining all the key issues to consider when deploying investigative tools under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, Covert Investigation is a highly practical and detailed guide to this important, complex, and sometimes controversial area of the law. This sixth edition of Covert Investigation has been fully revised to incorporate amendments to RIPA enacted by the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021, setting the moral and legal context for the ethical management and implementation of covert investigations, and the statutory principles underpinning such interventions. Its first Part discusses the issues facing authorizing officers and focuses on practical management issues from both strategic and operational perspectives, including the management of risk. Part 2 concentrates on the statutory elements of covert investigations, addressing directed and intrusive surveillance, property interference and surveillance through communications and the data generated. It includes detailed discussion of the use of covert human intelligence sources, especially the significant moral issues arising from relationship manipulation and privacy intrusion. The authors present clear and concise guidance to ensure that applications for covert investigations are made only in appropriate circumstances and that such investigations are undertaken with integrity. Featuring a range of helpful tools, such as scenarios, tips, and checklists, this edition is an essential resource for police and non-police investigators alike The book forms part of the Blackstone's Practical Policing Series. The series, aimed at junior to middle ranking officers, consists of practical guides containing clear and detailed explanations of the relevant legislation and practice, accompanied by case studies, illustrative diagrams, and useful checklists.

GAO's Forensic Audits and Special Investigations team (FSI), which was created in 2005 as an interdisciplinary team consisting of investigators, auditors, and analysts, conducts covert tests at the request of the Congress to identify vulnerabilities and internal control weaknesses at executive branch agencies. These vulnerabilities and internal control weaknesses include those that could compromise homeland security, affect public safety, or have a financial impact on taxpayer's dollars. FSI conducts covert tests as "red team" operations, meaning that FSI does not notify agencies in advance about the testing. Recently, concerns have arisen as to whether top management at the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) were negatively impacting the results of red team operations by leaking information to security screeners at the nation's airports in advance of covert testing operations.

The leading practical guide for anyone working in covert investigation, presenting clear and concise guidance to ensure that applications for covert investigations are made only in appropriate circumstances and are then undertaken with the utmost integrity.

This guide contains all the legislation, codes of practice and case-law relating to covert investigation methods and examines the issues that investigators need to consider when deploying such investigative tools, concentrating on the implications of RIPA.

Informants are an invaluable, often instrumental aspect of criminal investigations, but they do present certain management issues. In the necessarily clandestine world they inhabit, the imposition of institutional control presents unique challenges. Lack of training and communication among law enforcement professionals tend to ensure the same error

"This is the most comprehensive and thoughtful work ever done on undercover policing. It will be the benchmark by which all further scholarship in this area will be judged."—Jerome Skolnick, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law "If you believe in undercover tactics, this book will warn you. If you are opposed to covert activities by the police, this excellent study will force you to rethink your position. . . . Undercover is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the threat, but also the usefulness, of surveillance by law enforcement officials."—R. Drinan, Georgetown University "Gary Marx's book is one of the best of the rare species, thoughtful and analytic books about police surveillance. He has a thousand stories, most of them current . . . and he makes a solid study out of them. He has written a sociological map for surveillance, giving it a structure that it has never before had."—P. Chevigny, New York University "This is the best single treatment of the problem of undercover investigations in our literature. Gary Marx writes not only with erudition and sensitivity, he is a very sensible man as well. He has mastered a vast amount of detail while not losing sight of the big picture. I cannot praise this book too highly."—J. Kaplan, Stanford University "A tour de force on a very difficult subject. . . . This is an important, needed, well-executed book. It will be widely read and used."—D. Bayley, State University of New York, Albany "A remarkable success at weaving legal and sociological factors in an otherwise controversial and seemingly irreconcilable interplay of disciplines."—J. Wilczynski, Prosecutor's Brief "A wonderful book!"—Professor Arthur Miller, C-NBC Live "Deserves a wide audience beyond practitioners and scholars."—A. Bouza, Chief of Police, Minneapolis