Amazingly the Met Police in 2011 requested access to 57,000 peoples phone and letters. This is the latest year Met released data.
That close to 1% of Londoners being phone bugged.
Its likely in 2012 with the Olympics the figure soared further.
Big Brother Watch had obtained these numbers from Freedom of Information enquiries.
They quote Scotland Yard as saying these were all “crucial” in solving cases “where there is an imminent life at risk”.
In 2009 51.000 such requests, 2010 56,000 requests.
Clearly the Scotland yard statements are ludicrous. So its likely one out of every 132 people you know is being bugged. It could be you…

How do we compare to other countries?
Other large European countries don’t snoop on their citizens anything like as much.
Spying on your own people is clearly addictive for Scotland Yard.