Absolutely. The only way any authority should ever be able to wiretap or get phone / internet records is with a warrant signed by a judge because there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual has committed a crime.

Even then this should only be available for law enforcement, not local fucking councils!

How did we get into this mess?

The article is really unclear, but to me it sounds like they were doing reverse phone lookups.

Illegal advertising - get the details of the number on the poster.

Unregistered pets - maybe they have an 'if found please call ...' tag on the pet, but no pet registration.

People dumping stuff illegally - if you were dumping general household/office waste, you'd probably have letters or bills with your address on it already, but I can think of scenarios where they might only have your email address to go on.

The reasons why they're seeking the numbers are law enforcement reasons. Dumping rubbish and having unregistered pets violate by-laws.

Wiretaps (ie: obtaining content) do require a warrant, and in the state of Victoria, where this is, half of all such applications for warrants are rejected by the magistrate. Getting the name and address of the owner of a phone number is a humdrum law enforcement issue, and really councils should have that power. Getting the list of calls made or where emails have been sent is a more serious violation of privacy (instead of "who owns this?" it's "what do they do with it?"), and I imagine that there's simply a legal loophole there.

The article has an amazing lack of detail and follow-through.

Whilst I fully support local councils generally - I've seen how ruinous centralized decision-making can be for small/remote communities - there are indeed far too many local councils which seem overrun either by incompetents who are easily exploited, or worse: petty, corrupt, back-stabbing psychopaths who abuse process against people and small businesses with competing interests.

Even if we pretend for 10ms that surveillance is even remotely justifiable and is the only option to deal with pet ownership and littering (!), I am immediately concerned about what accountability and oversight measures are or aren't in place. Local councils are already notoriously rife with corruption, incompetence and abuse of process - that it's so easy for that sort of culture to breed indicates fundamental problems which desperately need addressing before this kind of power could possibly be entertained for such weak institutions...

Astounding.

The 1996 documentary Rats In The Ranks is recommended viewing.