A freelance journalist has used the Data Protection Act to discover the extent to which police have been keeping him under surveillance.

Matt Salusbury, who is a journalist and campaigner, sent a letter and paid £10 to discover what data the police kept on him.

He found out that his photograph was taken in 2002 when he went to a public meeting, and that when he covered an arms fair in 2007 as a journalist the police noted: “At 1240 hours, Matt Salusbury, male IC1, observed cycling along Victoria Dock Yard…”