CCTV spy cars, privacy and the right to be forgotten

If it is not properly regulated, however, the same technology can allow advertisers to pitch products to our mobile phones based upon a detailed knowledge of our buying habits and movements.

Local authorities might launch new and tougher fines for things like parking infringements, based not on current statistics but solely on predictions.

The debate about whether people like Edward Snowdon are whistleblowers or traitors rages on. Few people, however, will feel comfortable knowing that national agencies like GCHQ and the American NSA are able and willing to track their own digital conversations.

And the American Aviation Authority's recent announcement that 30,000 non-military drones will fill US skies before the end of the decade may not come as altogether good news either.

Whilst drones may prove a convenient means of delivery for booksellers like Amazon, and a great source of fun for hobbyists, they will also carry obvious challenges to privacy.

It's easy to foresee a time when marketing companies will indulge in the Big Spend, gathering information on our private habits in and around the home, as seen from the skies.

Governments will obviously need to act quickly to regulate domestic drone use, but if local councils have bent the rules with CCTV, how long will it take data-hungry corporations to do the same with reference to drones?

Democracies need surveillance if they are to function as free societies and most of us are willing to trade a certain amount of privacy in the interests of personal and shared security.

Yet the shift in many countries from limited surveillance to mass surveillance of whole populations is worrying.

Technology is amoral and, for the most part, brings huge benefits. But even those technologies that start out harmless or beneficial are all-too-often put to sinister uses unless those wielding them are subject to tight scrutiny.