We live in a world which is very much at odds with itself in terms of privacy.

On the one hand, we share the minutiae of our lives on internet social network sites like never before – you can often build up a picture of a perfect stranger’s full day from their tweets or Facebook status updates.

On the other, people have become increasingly concerned about not only the amount and type of information which is kept on us by various agencies, bodies and organisations, but how they obtain that information.

So there may be some disquiet in some quarters about the revelation that West Yorkshire Police is tapping into phone calls and e-mails an average of 35 times a day – among the most frequent use of surveillance powers of any police force in the country.

Since the spectre of terrorist attacks became more of a very real threat at the turn of the century than for a long time previously, police and security services have had to monitor the vastly increased amount of communications traffic – e-mails, text messages, phone calls – to combat terrorism and organised crime.

There are, however, limits as to what a free state should accept in terms of who is being monitored, how often, and for what reasons. Whatever we choose to share ourselves, privacy is still one of the foundation stones of our society, and without it we risk becoming a police state.

Now an inquiry will take place into the use of the surveillance powers which have allowed West Yorkshire Police to monitor such a large number of communications, and it will be interesting to see if the scale of monitoring is indeed justified.