Areport from privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has revealed how many times UK police forces asked to access details of personal texts, emails, calls and web searches between 2012 and 2014. The data, gathered under freedom of information laws, shows that 733,237 requests were made, amounting to one every two minutes. Under current legislation, the police have to submit a request within their own force. Only four per cent of these were refused, the report found.
Almost a quarter of all requests were made by the Metropolitan Police (177,287), the highest in the country, followed by the West Midlands Police (99,444; 13 per cent).
The scale of these requests has led to calls for the police’s powers to be curbed. In its report (available as a PDF at www.snipca.com/16807),…