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London's police asked Big Tech for private communications data over 700,000 times last year
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Thanks for the background, I'm not familiar with UK's regulation on telcos.
I stand corrected, this isn't like wiretap as the article mention Communication Data (CD) is metadata rather than content. It's still very intrusive as it show who is talking to who, when, and possibily where (location is metadata).
It make sense to make access to metadata a bit easier than metadata+content. The scale is still surprising, what kind of crime is London police investigating at a rate of 700k (or even 100k) a year ? It still beaches privacy so it should be proportional.
I agree, 700k is suspiciously high but without additional information its hard to say what is driving it. Unless each separate component of a request is considered to be a separate request. But who knows
Apparently not the public. Lack of transparency makes it hard for citizens and lawmakers to make informed policy decisions.
I agree