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Britain, which is often referred to as a surveillance society due to its huge CCTV use, now faces a new claim to fame, as figures have been disclosed showing that police and high ranking public officials routinely access about 1,400 emails and telephone records each day.
Over the last year alone, police, council, and other public organisations have made over half a million separate requests for confidential data that relates to communications.
This is a 44% increase from the previous totals for the last two years.
Authorities have access to communication records and data due to the passing of the Investigatory Powers Act, which was created to give authorities access to data as it relates to preventing the spread of terrorism and combating the threat.
The Act allows councils, intelligence agencies, and the police to request access to telephone dial lists and email addresses showing where messages have been sent and received.
It does not allow the officials to read the content or access the recording of mobile calls.
In an effort to reduce the number of communication data requests, in 2008 the Government issued a new set of guidelines regarding when such information is allowed to be requested.
However, the 2008 figure was only down slightly from the figure reported in 2007 before the additional legislation was added.
In fact the figures show that one in every 78 of adult citizens in the UK has been spied on at least once over the past year.
Despite the disappointing figures which led the Liberal Home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, to say that the UK is now a surveillance state and that the Government has lost control, the Government begs to differ.
A Home Office spokesman said that the Government is simply trying to find the right balance between security and individual privacy and that is why it first created the new set of guidelines.
The way you have put this story is confusing. There are no figures for the number of records or emails accessed. What the Interception Commissioner reports is the number of occasions on which access to communications data was authorised. Each authorisation may extend to several people, several means of communication for one person, and cover a significant period – we don’t know any meaningful figures because they are not kept, and would be secret if they were.
In an effort to reduce the number of communication data requests, in 2008 the Government issued a new set of guidelines regarding when such information is allowed to be requested.
Not true. A completely non-binding and meaningless statement was made in order to mollify the media. The criteria could have been changed by statutory instrument, but they weren’t. And in fact this year regulations were passed requiring ISPs and Telcos to keep all comms data in specified forms for at least a year. Meanwhile the Government is also actually busy trying to change the system to make it easier to get data and *harder to count* requests.