The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year. It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and authorities continue to collect communications metadata. Police forces were far and away the most prolific spies, acquiring 93.7 percent of the data. Phone numbers were the most popular way of identifying targets, accounting for 82.6 percent of data. The biggest targets of the surveillance were the prevention of drug offenses (24 percent), sexual offenses (12 percent), theft and burglary (9 percent)”]

