Almost 800 organisations can now legally spy on UK residents, including local councils, NHS Trusts, the Charity Commission and our favourite group of people of all time, the Health and Safety Executive.
A report by Sir Paul Kennedy, the Interception Of Communications Commissioner showed that requests to bug UK citizens range far beyond the Police and Intelligence agencies. The report also confirmed that almost 1,000 people a day have their emails, phone calls and letters intercepted.
Local authorities made 1,700 requests to access mobile phone records and other private information during the last nine months of 2006, amongst a total of 253,557 other applications to intercept private communications under surveillance laws - and it is understood that most of these were approved.
Others who can legally access our private communications and information here in the UK include the Financial Services Authority,the Ambulance Service, local Fire authorities, prison Governers, Office of Fair Trading, The Environment Agency, the Food Standards Agency and the Rural Payments Agency.
But, out of all these, it has also been proven that more than 1,000 bugging operations were in some way flawed, with errors leading to the targeting of innocent people.
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