… because the Government is thinking about keeping all the records for you. Yes indeed, the BBC brings the news that the Home Office is thinking of introducing a national database containing details of every email sent in the UK.

Only a spoilsport would mention Big Brother, unnecessary surveillance, IT project failures, invasion of privacy, money being diverted from other more worth causes, risk of data being stolen, problems if there are any errors or any of that other stuff.

Britain’s the most watched country in the world, with more CCTV cameras per person than anyone else. That CCTV is hopelessly inadequately regulated - you don’t even have to have any qualifications or background checks to be an operator, and there are few restrictions on who gets access to images and what they can do with them.

So it’s rather alarming, to say the least, to read that 19 out of 20 CCTV systems don’t even comply with the piffling rules there are in place.

Personally, I can’t wait until the ID cards programme gives the government a high-resolution photograph of each and every one of us, facial recognition technology improves so people can be picked out from moving CCTV, and cameras are installed at eye-height in lamp posts to get a clear shot.

Sound like a fantasy?

Tell that to the Information Commissioner, who suggested such systems could be routine by 2016 in his report on the Surveillance Society:

34.3. CCTV is also less noticeable. Smaller cameras are embedded in lampposts at eyelevel and walls, which allow the more efficient operation of the now universal facial
recognition systems. Morphing software which combines images from multiple
cameras to build a 3-dimensional picture is also being pioneered, although
campaigners and lawyers argue it is inaccurate and not a ‘real’ image.

34.4. It is not just the cameras themselves. Almost universal wireless networking
allows the cameras to be freed from bulky boxes and wires. In addition, the cameras
are linked to intelligent street lighting which provides ‘ideal’ lighting conditions for
recognition software, and also movement activated floodlighting and extra cameras
in the case of crowd ‘clumping’ or unusual movement.

See today’s Independent for news of Nick Clegg’s plans to take on Gordon Brown on the growing surveillance society.

Of course, Dave’s Conservatives have abandoned the defence of civil liberties and personal privacy and decided to abolish the Data Protection Act (or rewrite, or reform, or, oh we’re not sure).

Fortunately the Liberal Democrats aren’t so fickle, so there’ll be a motion debated at this year’s conference on curtailing the excesses of this growing surveillance society.

Automatic Number Plate recognition gets 1 in 25 read-outs wrong, the Department for Transport reveals.

We discovered last week - thanks to an inadvertent leak from the Home Office - that the whole national network of ANPR cameras will soon be linked in to the police.

So the accuracy of the cameras is pretty vital.

And while 96% is pretty good as a mark in a maths test, it’s less good when it comes to tracking car drivers’ every movement. When you consider that the cameras monitor millions of cars, 4% failure turns into thousands upon thousands of false positives.

The Times, among others, reports the news that:

The details of journeys taken by millions of motorists are to be handed to police under a government “Big Brother” plan to use road pricing technology in the fight against crime.

The proposal is to introduce new legislation to give police routine, open door access to all number plate recognition data collected by third parties - Transport for London initially, but in the long run any council or transport authority that runs these cameras.

There will be extensive debate about the merits and disadvantages of these proposals, so instead of that I thought I’d recount the more amusing story of how the story got out.

The government tabled a Written Ministerial Statement explaining about the new arrangement between TfL and the Metropolitan Police. They sent it to Hansard and to the House of Commons Library, who forwarded it to interested MPs.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to turn off “track changes”.

The statement had been written over a wholly separate internal document marked “Policy - Restricted” which set out details of:

- the plans to roll out the London scheme nationally with legislation in the autumn
- the split with the Department for Transport over the proposals
- the government’s “handling strategy” for proposals they themselves dub “Big Brother”

Good to see the department in charge of Identity Cards has such a grasp of modern technology.