It sounds like spin.

>“Retrieving a telephone subscriber’s name and address for an investigation into an offence is an important tool," she said.

That was the reply from the spokeswoman and the article provides no accusations of any further "data interception" behavior.

If I didn't know better, I'd say this article is trying to characterize caller id/the phonebook as "intercepting data", sure, it's technically accurate, but the words "caller id" are a lot less scary.