What is covert policing? How do covert surveillance officers use their time? What are their perceptions of the work, its status, rewards and challenges? How are operations planned, authorised, carried out and reviewed? How do officers understand and negotiate the dilemmas involved in carrying out the peculiar demands of their job? Does the existing authorisation regime strike an appropriate balance between the need for police accountability and the protection of civil liberties on the one hand, and operational efficiency and the demands of security on the other?

This book provides answers to these questions and more, and presents the first truly ethnographic account of the inner-world of covert policing. This book sheds new light on a largely hidden and poorly understood form of investigation and offers a major contrubution to research on police culture and police practice.