Sir Paul Kennedy the Governments Communications Commissioner reports that permission was granted for various UK government agencies to intercept phone calls, letters and emails of over 500,000 citizens last year.

That’s 1 in every 78 citizens.

The program targets people in the UK and overseas and according to Sir Paul plays a key role in preventing murders, drug and people smuggling, tax evasion and terrorism.

Some 600 central, local and quasi government bodies are entitled to request permission to intercept data, which is generally limited to who contacted whom, when and where.

Public authorities made 504,073 requests for communications data to communications and internet service providers, slightly fewer than the previous year. Of the 595 errors reported three quarters were attributable to public authorities with the rest down to the service providers. Confusion over interpretation of data is the common cause of these errors, particularly in relation to international time zones and which IP address belongs to which physical street address.

In one case, police investigating a paedophile ring asked an ISP for subscriber information relating to an internet protocol (IP) address, but received the wrong physical address. As a result police arrested a person who was completely innocent.