Secret police snoops check out 66,000 phone records

That's tens of thousands more than in any other state and Victoria Police doesn't need judicial approval to do it.

Any officer of the rank of inspector or above can approve applications to access the phone records of Victorians.

They did so 65,703 times in 2010-11, compared with 50,234 applications approved the previous year and 40,617 in 2008-09.

Telecommunications Act records also reveal Victoria Police spent almost $16 million tapping phones and recording conversations during the past three years.
They did so after getting 1036 phone bugging applications approved by Administrative Appeals Tribunal members during that time - almost one a day.

The head of Victoria Police's intelligence and covert support department yesterday defended the bugging and phone records snooping. "There is a very good reason for every one of them," Assistant Commissioner Jeff Pope said.

"There is a stringent process in place that we have to go through to have them approved.''

heraldsun.com.au 10 May 2012

The government is spying on the masses, and especially on the political innocent ones.

There is very little phone tapping with respect to the drug families, and their associates.

What the government is interested in is the people with a political opinion that is contrary to government policies, as in a dictatorship, or a communist regime, and then this goes on their file.

These people are persecuted both in a formal manner and a more subtle one.

They are brought to the attention of judges and magistrates in court rooms, and their matter are 'lost'.