Surveillance Britain

Life today relies so much on computers that we fail to notice most of them.

From rising in the morning until retiring at night, almost everything we do involves billions of clock cycles smoothing our passage through life.

But as we go, we also leave electronic footprints in our wake, which are as detailed and indelible as they are unique.

The number of databases our identities, movements and associations appear on is growing quickly. The cost of technology to usefully collect and analyse personal data is tumbling, and the UK is now seen as a pioneer in the use of mass surveillance.

There’s a growing public perception that the government is desperately interested in our electronic footprints, but to what end?

Are we entering a time when innocent patterns of activity can accidentally mark us out as potential enemies of the state, or is it all being done for benign reasons of public safety, crime detection and resource provisioning?

We’re not the first generation to ask – not by a long way. Such concerns go back to a time when computers were still in their infancy and most people had practically no interaction with them at all.

An efficient tyranny?
Back in 1970, Professor AS Douglas of the London School of Economics was a worried man. Writing in the October 1970 issue of Science Journal, he asked: " Would we be happy under an efficient tyranny – one in which every movement and action of the citizen was recorded, analysed, cross-checked instantaneously and no incident, no matter how trivial, ever forgotten?" The systems Professor Douglas foresaw are now falling into place, but are they really as sinister as we believe?

Take a simple shopping trip for example. Driving into town, your number plate may be recorded using Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. In London, this is how the congestion charge is administered, but across the country the police also use mobile ANPR cameras as a dragnet to pull over people without licences or insurance, or those accused of other crimes. It was recently revealed by the tabloid press that the police also have access to the Highways Agency’s own ANPR network, which was originally set up to anonymously monitor traffic flow.

On public transport, your movements are also tracked. In London, for example, the use of your uniquely identifiable Oyster card means your progress can be traced through the Underground, though you can obtain an anonymous card.

Buying a train ticket also leaves electronic footprints and CCTV cameras in stations spot even those paying in cash. On trains across the country, you can see cameras in operation when you pass the train manager’s office on a Virgin Pendolino service, observing each carriage. On buses too, small, shiny, black camera domes record what goes on.

Once in a shopping centre, CCTV cameras operated by individual stores and by the centre itself, in conjunction with the police, keep an eye out for shoplifters. But private companies that are not connected directly with the centre may also be monitoring your movements while you shop, sometimes in novel ways.

One such system is Footpath by Path Intelligence of Portsmouth in Hampshire. Already installed in several shopping centres in the south of England, the system works by detecting the signals of mobile phones.

However, even this system, which sounds slightly sinister at first, is strictly controlled and anonymous, as Path Intelligence is at pains to explain. "When we developed Footpath we contacted a number of organisations including Liberty, the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the Information Commissioner. Acting on their feedback we introduced important changes to our system to make it more secure. We are continually looking to engage with critics and improve our practices," said a company spokesman.

But isn’t it possible that the collected data could identify individuals? " We have no idea who you are as an individual," said Path Intelligence. “We only look at the path your phone takes – it’s like looking at a dot moving around. In isolation this information isn’t too interesting until you look at the wider trends and see many dots taking the same route or visiting the same areas.”