Police forces pay phone companies for data that allows them to track movements of mobiles, lists numbers of calls made and received, sites looked at and a log of every text message. This should not be confused with the far greater powers state security has over your communications or the greater surveillance that the police employ themselves in special cases. The gathered data is legally available for a range of state services, such as job centres, councils etc.

5,144,200 population in Scotland so extrapolated to the UK's 60,943,912 this would be a cost of over £60 million paid by the police to private phone companies to spy on us on 191070 occassions per annum.

[ This information isn't available elsewhere online, it was cribbed from a FOI request from the Scottish version of an English newspaper. I would credit the newspaper but they probably prefer anonymity since their reporter and editors total 'misunderestimation' of Scottish requests is 15,500. Regardless, I doubt it is possible to copyright Freedom of Information requests ].