The A to Z of ID cards

Z is for Zeitgeist

The prevailing mood in the UK is one of increasing caution about the threat of creeping surveillance.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee said the UK had become one of the most spied on countries in the world, with more than four million CCTV cameras and the genetic details of seven per cent of the population stored in the National DNA Database.

It suggested a raft of reforms to deal with concerns about local councils snooping on people's communications to tackle minor misdemeanours such as littering and the growth of national electronic databases.

In 2008 information commissioner Richard Thomas expressed similar fears, warning that plans by the government to create a database of all UK communications risked seeing the UK "sleepwalking into a surveillance society".

silicon.com's Steve Ranger contributed to this report