Just in case you thought no one was listening....

The number of secret court-authorized wiretaps across the country surged by 19 percent last year, records show. As law enforcement authorities scurried to keep apace of improving technology favored by criminals, not a single application was denied.

State and federal judges approved 1,710 applications for wiretaps of wire, oral or electronic communications last year, and four states - New York, California, New Jersey and Florida - accounted for three out of every four surveillance orders, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That agency is required to collect the figures and report them to Congress.

And these numbers don't included FISA applications for national security wiretaps, which also reached a record number of 1,764 last year. One more unsettling statistic:

Most of the wiretap applications, some 1,507 wiretaps, targeted portable devices, such as cell phones and pagers.