'Machines will rule if we don't curb surveillance'

Daily Mail | November 2, 2006

Machines rather than people could soon be running Britain because the country has sleepwalked into a surveillance society, the Government's privacy watchdog warned today.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas delivered the alarming warning as fears grow over the explosion in technology used to monitor individuals.

"There are dangers to our privacy, our autonomy, the more the information is converged together," he said.

Stressing the threat came from government as well as private companies, he added: "We have got to make sure there is full accountability and that people don't go too far and really undermine our fundamental rights and our integrity as individuals. Humans must dictate our future, not machines."

He also raised the spectre of surveillance getting so bad in Britain that it would be similar to eastern European countries when they were under Communist regimes.

The Information Commissioner stressed that while much of the current data collected on individuals was "fragmented", the real danger to individual freedoms would come if all this information was gathered under a "Big Brother" regime.

"Two years ago I said 'are we in danger of sleep walking into a surveillance society'. Our report commissioned from external experts really says we are already there. We are waking up to a surveillance society," he said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He stressed there were benefits from increased surveillance, such as the four million CCTV cameras across Britain, and other measures to fight crime and terrorism.

However, he also emphasised there were "dangers" of people being wrongly accused of a crime or other offences because of f lawed data or excessive surveillance. The leaking of information could also be problematic.

The watchdog's office is today hosting an international conference in London on the risks and benefits of surveillance. Mr Thomas said the study commissioned by his office sent a "clear signal" of how Britain was "waking up to a surveillance society."

"It's not just the cameras in the streets. It is the technology monitoring our movements and activities. Every time we use a mobile phone, use our credit cards, go online, do searches on the internet, electronic shopping...more and more information is being collected and we are leaving an electronic footprint," he said.

The report comes as an international league table is published suggesting Britain is the most "snooped on" nation in the world. The report warns: "The combination of CCTV, biometrics, databases and tracking technologies can be seen as part of a much broader exploration, often funded with support from the US/UK war on terror."

Fears are growing in the UK over the number of public databases. There are proposals to put millions of people's medical records on a controversial computer system for the NHS.

There are also proposals for spy-in-the-sky technology to monitor the movement of every car under a road charging system, a database of all children for town halls, new biometric passports, as well as the latest Census which will ask people about their income and where they stay overnight.

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