2. Privacy: Surveillance

In a modernised society, your actions and often your location are being tracked. By private corporations such as the telecoms industry, by individuals with closed-circuit cameras on their properties, and by the government.

Many of the electronic devices that you carry around day-to-day are constantly sending out radio signals declaring their location.

Your mobile phone needs to do this in order to be assigned to a particular cell in the phone network, for example. Even devices that don't broadcast your location all the time, can give your location away when you use them. Your bank will keep records of wherever your credit card was used to make a purchase, for example.

This location tracking isn't necessarily bad - your phone wouldn't even work without location data. But what if this information is used for reasons other than their original purpose? If someone put all of this location data together, they could make a complete map of your movements throughout the day.

This is where the controversy lies.

Which authorities have the right to access these records? For what reason?

For example, is it right that a local council uses electronic tracking tools designed to counter terrorism in order to spy on suspected dog fouling?

The risk to citizen privacy is 'mission creep' where strong systems and laws set up to counter serious crime are used for trivial reasons.