Surveillance Unlimited (How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth)

Your car is satellite-tracked, your features auto-identified on video, your e-mails, faxes and phone calls monitored. You are covertly followed via transmitters implanted in your clothes, via your switched-off mobile and your credit card transactions. Your character, needs and interests are profiled by surveillance of every website you visit, every newsgroup you scan, every purchase you make. Big Brother is here, quietly adding to your files in the name of government efficiency and the fight against organised crime and terrorism.As Keith Laidler argues in this urgent, important book, the potential for abuse is far-reaching and formidable. Surveillance can indeed fight crime. But, he asks, at what price? If we want zero crime, can we accept its price of zero freedom? Is the deployment of such technologies even legal? What will be their effects on the fabric of society? And what can we do to prevent the worst excesses?This book has the answers.