Editor's opinion: Ever feel like you are being watched?

Facial recognition software; CCTV; image capture; video surveillance.

It seems everywhere we move these days, someone is watching us (see William Mata’s feature on Pages 6/7).

Does it make you feel safer – or more ginger as you go about your daily business? Do you care that Amazon will serve you up advertising based on what you last browsed for the next time you go in?

Big Brother seemed a distant threat back in the early 1980s and the Orwellian vision was fantasy. But wind on through the 90s and the 00s and that dream has become a reality.

Ask yourself questions about some of the larger criminal cases which have hit headlines: Lockerbie, Fred West, the Twin Towers, even Soham – could today’s technology have stopped any of these in their tracks?

We may not like the idea that we are on film wherever we go, but the safety argument is a very powerful one which is hard to ignore.