Britain: March of the state spies: One in 78 adults came under state-sanctioned surveillance last year

Britain's extraordinary march towards a surveillance state is revealed today by shock new figures.
They show that one request is made every minute for officials to spy on someone's phone records or email accounts.
The number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.

Last year there were 504,073 new cases - an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance.

The snoopers are using a law originally aimed at terror suspects. But their targets include people suspected of storing petrol without a licence and bringing a dog into the country without quarantining it.

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