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Law enforcement agencies’ requests for customer information from mobile phone carriers reached at least 1.3 million in 2011. A Congressional inquiry found a staggering increase in the amount of cellphone surveillance conducted over the last five years by police across the United States.

And mobile phone providers aren’t exactly thrilled with law enforcement’s expanded monitoring of their services, especially when confronted with several hundred information requests every day.

The New York Times reports that while most police requests for wireless records require court orders and subpoenas, a growing number are made under “emergency” conditions, bypassing the normal procedures. The Times obtained the statistics from the office of Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who has been a leading watchdog of surveillance tactics.

While wireless carriers like AT&T and Sprint say they generally require search warrants or court orders before releasing customer data, emergency requests come with far less judicial oversight. Moreover, as the number of phones with GPS capabilities increases, it has become even easier for police to track and obtain customer data. And sometimes, a request seems so off-base or inappropriate, that the companies will refer the inquiries to the FBI.

But law enforcement officials say the rampant uptick in record requests is a hard fact of modern crime-fighting, the Times reports:

“At every crime scene, there’s some type of mobile device,” said Peter Modafferi, chief of detectives for the Rockland County district attorney’s office in New York, who also works on investigative policies and operations with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The need for the police to exploit that technology “has grown tremendously, and it’s absolutely vital,” he said in an interview.

Markey’s office obtained law enforcement requests from nine cell phone companies, including giants like AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, but also from smaller, regional providers like U.S. Cellular and C Spire Wireless. And though Congress in 2006 granted immunity to cellphone companies that cooperate in warrantless wiretapping operations, the carriers are far from comfortable with the surge in requests for their subscribers’ information. T-Mobile, the Times reports, even turned two “inappropriate” inquiries to the FBI.

And the rise in this type of surveillance comes with an added cost to taxpayers. Mobile phone companies charge police departments for all the data mining, and with more requests than ever, the bills are racking up. AT&T charged $8.3 million last year for this service, nearly three times as much as the $2.8 million it collected in 2007.

You can check some of the statistics for yourself via Markey’s office, which has posted the congressman’s letters to nine phone companies along with the response he received from each. In fact, the total number of police requests for cellphone information last year is probably higher than 1.3 million. The Times reports that the record-keeping was far from complete.

“We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers” Markey said in a press release today. “Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack?”