Today Sir Paul Kennedy, the Interception of Communication Commissioner, released his report on the amount of surveillance requests in the UK in 2008. It has been revealed that Councils, Police and other organisations made 504,073 requests to monitor communication "traffic".
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “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. 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."
Whilst no-one would object to legitimate law enforcement needs, the scale of this surveillance may lead to opportunities for abuse (as we have seen here).
It is worth noting that the vast majority of these requests are from the police and security services, only a small percentage are from local councils. More discussion on this topic here.
Of course these are the 'legitimate' requests. This does not account for all the operations that require 'rule bending', let alone all the illegitimate and illegal surveillance devices, sold in the tens of thousands in the UK each year. Add on to that spy-ware and trojan viruses monitoring or computers and spy-phone software using your mobile phone as a listening device. Oh, and lets not forget the 3.2M CCTV cameras in the UK, where in most cases no checks are required to monitor them.
If you are concerned about your privacy, both business and personal (and many of us are) contact FaberBrent for help.
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