State spying that would make the Stasi proudBy EDWARD HEATHCOAT AMORYfull article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511210&in_page_id=1770In the last nine months of 2006, 960 new applications for the right to peer into the private lives of Britons were made every day.\n\nIt is a level of Government surveillance that would make even the Stasi, the former East German secret police renowned as the world\'s most effective intelligence agency, proud.\n\nThere are three different types of surveillance. The first, interception of communications - listening in while people are on the phone, or watching what we do on the internet - is the most difficult to justify.\n\nBut the grounds for interception are so wide as to allow most requests tobe approved. As well as the more predictable excuse of \"national security\", they include \"safeguarding the economic well-being of the UK\". The police, the security services and Customs can all use this technique but they need authorisation from the Home Secretary herself or, in urgent cases, get temporary permission from one of her senior officials.\n\nThe second type is surveillance - old-fashioned spying. The list of possible justifications for this is absurdly long - including \"to prevent and detect crime or prevent disorder, public safety, public health, to assess or collect any tax, duty,levy or other charge payable to a government department\". Just about any of us could be under surveillance using one of this list.\n\nMost worryingly, a long list of government agencies - including 474 councils - can put us under the spotlight. Senior officials in each one can simply give the go-aheadand apply for a rubber stamp to be given later by the Interception Commissioner.\n\nThis Commissioner, former judge Sir Paul Kennedy, with a team of five inspectors, is supposed to check to make sure that all the bugging and spying waived through by the Home Secretary or others has been justified.\n\nHis report this week identifies more than 1,000 cases over nine months where he found that the rules had been broken.\n\nThe third type of surveillance is the most common - access to communications data.\n\nThis includes discovering the identities of who we phone and which internet sites we visit. This information is even easier for public authorities to obtain with relatively junior officials able to authorise it.\n\nLater, as in the case of surveillance, justification for needing this information is considered by overworked bureaucrats accountable to the Interception Commissioner.\n\nBut by the timehis staff gets round to looking at the paperwork, the trading standards officers down at the town hall, for example, may have been peering at your phone and internet records for more than a year.\n\nThere is a tribunal to which you can complain, but since virtually no one under surveillance will knowthey are being watched, the tribunal isn\'t busy and has virtually never found in favour of a complainant. big, brother, indvidual, kgb, privacy, rights, spying, stassi, survelliance