Surveillance Society

Last night, I was listening to the recent discussion on Newsnight about whether UK (with all its legal measures) was sleep walking into a surveillance society. The interview was between Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty and John Denham, Minister of State for the Home Office. What was interesting was the discussion about consumers being willing to give over their information to companies (reward cards), but possibly not the case when we talk about large DNA databases of information. Although it was acknowledged by the interviewees that there was no absolute right to privacy, there was still a need for open debate (even for DNA databases). The idea of a surveillance society is not far from people's mind. See the UK Information Commissioner's website on this subject and the Surveillance and Society webpage.