People’s privacy in the long term is being eroded by technology to the extent that we may have very little of it left in years to come, unless the government takes action. According to a challenging report from the Royal Academy Of Engineering, called Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance, there has to be a better way forward than increased use of ID cards and CCTV and, it feels, engineers have a key role to play.

It points out that we shouldn’t need ID cards to prove who we are when shopping, merely that we are old enough and we have the money to pay. The Academy maintains that authorisation, not identification, is all that’s needed

“It should be possible to sign up for a loyalty card without having to register it to a particular individual - consumers should be able to decide what information is collected about them,” says Professor Nigel Gilbert, Chairman of the Academy working group that produced the report. “We have supermarkets collecting data on our shopping habits and also offering life insurance services. What will they be able to do in 20 years' time, knowing how many donuts we have bought?”

The report is also damning in its criticism of increased CCTV usage, claiming they can now record images of people that can be stored forever, allowing authorities to track a person’s movements throughout a particular period in time. It wants some restriction on how CCTV can be used in public places.

The report will be officially launched at a free evening tomorrow night at the Science Museum's Dana Centre in London. You can find a copy of it here.

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