Is the UK's sleepwalk into surveillance society over?

The UK has now woken from its sleepwalk towards a surveillance society to find we have actually arrived, according to information commissioner Richard Thomas. His original warning in 2004 that we were sliding insidiously towards a state of pervasive surveillance was followed just over two years later in December 2006 with the assertion that Big Brother was now a reality in the UK. This utterance came at the launch of a report called “A Surveillance Society” funded by the information commisioner's office, which concluded that surveillance was routine in most areas of life. This took place both at work and at leisure, while shopping, travelling, communicating by phone, watching TV, surfing the Internet, or just loitering.