In 2001 there were 1,571 speed traps, but the most recent figures show this had risen to 4,309 by 2007.

Britain tops the European league table for cameras, according to research by the speed camera alert system Wayfinder. Germany has 3,000 cameras, Italy has fewer than 2,000 and France under 1,000.

The Government has admitted that exceeding the speed limit is a contributory factor in just 6 per cent of accidents and 13 per cent of fatal crashes. Speeding fines generate more than £102million a year for the state.

The Government has begun monitoring millions of British holidaymakers using its controversial new 'terrorist detector' database. The top-secret computer system - tied into the airlines' ticketing network - makes judgments about travel habits and passengers' friends and family to decide if they are a security risk.

Like something from a science-fiction film, the Home Office has designed it to spot a 'criminal' or terrorist before they have done anything wrong. But the intrusiveness of the system at the heart of Government's so-called 'e-Borders' scheme has provoked such fury among civil liberties campaigners that some consider it akin to a modern-day Stasi headquarters.

All the information passengers give to travel agents, including home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, passport details and the names of family members, is shared with an unknown number of Government agencies for 'analysis' and stored for up to ten years.

But even as the 'profiling' system goes live, its reliability is being called into question. An internal Home Office document obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveals that during testing one 'potential suspect' turned out to be an airline passenger with a spinal injury flying into Britain with his nurse.

'Suspect' requests likely to cause innocent holidaymakers to get 'red flags' as potential terrorists include ordering a vegetarian meal, asking for an over-wing seat and travelling with a foreign-born husband or wife. The system will also 'red flag' passengers buying a one-way ticket and making a last-minute reservation and those with a history of booking tickets and not showing up for the flights. A previous history of travel to the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iran will also trigger an alarm, as will those with a record of sponsoring an immigrant from any of these countries.

State police have launched an investigation into the death of a teen whom police Tased. The 15-year-old died about 3:40 a.m. Sunday after Bay City police used a stun gun to subdue him at an apartment on South Catherine near East John.

Neighbors summoned authorities to quell a large fight, police said. When officers arrived, neighbors directed them to an apartment where they found two people arguing. Officers' attempts to diffuse the situation failed, police said. Police say they used the stun gun after the teen tried to fight with them and others in the apartment.

Snooping on the public has reached new heights with local authorities putting spy planes in the air to snoop on homeowners who are wasting too much energy.

Thermal imaging cameras are being used to create colour-coded maps which will enable council officers to identify offenders and pay them a visit to educate them about the harm to the environment and measures they can take.

A scheme is already under way in Broadland District Council in Norfolk, which has spent £30,000 hiring a plane with a thermal imaging camera. It said the exercise has been so successful other local authorities are planning to follow suit.

A quarter of all the largest public-sector database projects, including the ID cards register, are fundamentally flawed and clearly breach European data protection and rights laws, according to a report.

Claiming to be the most comprehensive map so far of Britain's "database state", the report says that 11 of the 46 biggest schemes, including the national DNA database and the Contactpoint index of all children in England, should be given a "red light" and immediately scrapped or redesigned.

The report, Database State by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, says that more than half of Whitehall's 46 databases and systems have significant problems with privacy or effectiveness, and could fall foul of a legal challenge.

Only six of the 46 systems, including those for fingerprinting, get a "green light" for being effective, proportionate, necessary and established - with a legal basis to guarantee against privacy intrusions. But even some of these databases have operational problems.

A further 29 databases earn an "amber light", meaning they have significant problems including being possibly illegal, and needing to be shrunk or split, or be amended to allow individuals the right to opt out. This group includes the NHS summary care record, the national childhood obesity database, the national pupil database, and the automatic number-plate recognition system.

The American government tried to force a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay to drop allegations of torture in return for his release, court documents published yesterday revealed.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, held by the US for nearly seven years, was told by the American military that he could win his freedom if he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, ended his High Court case to prove his claims of torture and agreed not to speak to the media about his ordeal. He rejected the deal.

Details of the extraordinary plea bargain were seized on by Mr Mohamed's lawyers as further evidence to support his allegations that he was illegally detained and brutally tortured after his capture by Pakistani and US security agents in 2002.

The document released by the High Court in London reveals that the plea bargain was offered last year while Mr Mohamed was held in the US naval base in Cuba, but after terrorism allegations against him had been dropped. Mr Mohamed was eventually released from Guantanamo Bay this year and allowed to return home.

The head of the CIA moved yesterday to formalise the new Obama administration's break with the past in its approach to national security, when he ordered the final decommissioning of secret overseas sites where the US had held, and in some cases tortured, al-Qaida prisoners.

Leon Panetta told the agency's staff that he was overturning one of the causes of complaint of human rights groups about detentions of terrorist suspects under the Bush regime: the use of private contractors to secure prisoners. From now on private security firms will no longer have any role in the sites.

The rejection of the services of private security firms in itself marks a clean break with past practices. During the Bush era, contractors enjoyed a bonanza – particularly in Iraq, where they were used to perform many of the roles of the overstretched military.

Panetta said that the sites – which are now empty, having received no new detainees since he took over the agency in February – would be decommissioned under the auspices of the agency itself. His announcement puts into practice the signal given by President Obama on the second day of his administration that he would have the facilities closed.

Brussels initiated legal action after declaring that UK laws guaranteeing data protection were “structurally flawed” and well below the European standard.

The criticism arose after the European Commission investigated the use of “behavioural advertising technology” by British internet service providers, which it found was illegal under European, but not British, law.

A Commission statement said that Brussels had sent several letters to the British authorities since last July asking why the Government had not taken action against BT after the company used Phorm technology — a covert method of targeting advertising based on user browsing habits — to secretly monitor the internet activity of 30,000 broadband customers in trials between 2006 and 2007.

A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers, an iPod, a cell phone, and other technology.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing the student, who has petitioned the court for the immediate return of his property and is demanding that investigators be prohibited from any further searches or analysis of his digital data. Massachusetts State Police participated in the search and are overseeing the forensic analysis of the seized property.

The dorm room search stemmed from an investigation into who sent an email to a Boston College mailing list alleging that another student was gay. Police say they know who sent the email and that the sender committed the crimes of "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and obtaining "unauthorized access to a computer system." However, nothing presented by the investigating officer to obtain the warrant, including the allegation that the student sent the email to the mailing list, could constitute the cited criminal offenses.

Some of the supposedly suspicious activities listed in support of the search warrant application include: the student being seen with "unknown laptop computers," which he "says" he was fixing for other students; the student uses multiple names to log on to his computer; and the student uses two different operating systems, including one that is not the "regular B.C. operating system" but instead has "a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on."

New regulations came into force in April 2009 requiring telephone and internet companies to keep logs of what numbers are called, and which websites and email services and internet telephony contacts are made.

Now, every government department and local council can access this telephone and internet data, given a judge's clearance.