We have long been aware of the potentially Orwellian threats to individual privacy that come with new developments in technology. Often the trade off is inevitable: technology permits a modern soceity to meet the needs of its members, but in return heightens the level of technological dependence to which we are subject.
How many times have we heard someone speculate about a return to the world of fifteen years ago in which mobile phones were entirely unused and unnecessary? In only one decade such technology has become so deeply entrenched in modern life that such a return to a previous state seems about as possible as reversing the movement of tectonic plates or the erosion of mountains.
There is no doubt that…