The UK surveillance society

"We are the most spied-upon society in Europe, with more CCTV cameras than the rest of the EU combined", laments the daily. "New Labour has used the shock of the 9/11 attacks to launch the most sustained assault on personal freedom ever seen in this country outside wartime. It is not just the ubiquity of CCTV cameras or speed cameras - they are simply the visible manifestation of Tony Blair's obsession with control. It is the plans for ID cards and biometric recognition, the national DNA database (which even its own inventor believes is out of control), the computerisation of medical records, the national children's database, ever more intrusive questions proposed for the next Census. Taken together they are stripping us bare of any real sense of privacy. ... There are profound philosophical questions about the relationship of the state to the individual at stake here."

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