Marigold
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Joined: 19 Apr 2008
Posts: 239
Location: Aberdeen
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 Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:42 pm Post subject: 1,500 snoop requests made every day |
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The Press Association article at Tiscali.co.uk (complete link below) writes: | Quote: | Fears have been raised about the scale of the "surveillance state" after it was revealed 1,500 requests to snoop on the public were made every day in Britain last year.
Councils, police and the intelligence services asked more than 500,000 times for approval to access private email and phone data, official figures revealed.
The total number of requests - including 1,500 from local councils - were approved, with each one allowing public authorities access to communications data - which includes records of phone, email and text messages - but not their content.
The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief", and questioned whether so many operations were necessary.
He said: "Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year.
"We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
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"The Government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint. We are still a long way from living under the Stasi but it beggars belief that it is necessary to spy on one in every 78 adults. The fact that numbers are up a half on two years ago makes a mockery of the Government's supposed crackdown."
The figures were published in the annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy. It showed 504,073 requests for communication data were made last year, or nearly 10,000 every week.
Powers to ask for the private data were handed to town halls and other government agencies under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. |
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http://www.tiscali.co.uk/news/pa/uknews/2009/08/10/1-500-snoop-request s-made-every-day.html
Hilz
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"The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity to which others are trying to prove him[her] wrong."
- - Harry Segall
"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." Lenin 1917 |
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