In November 2006 the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas stated “Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.” Today a Londoner is likely to be caught on camera 70 times a day while the UK’s National DNA Database is currently the biggest database of its kind in the world with over 4.5 million profiles. Does this matter and if so why?

The Forum considered some of the following questions:

• How much surveillance is too much?
• Can surveillance undermine trust in the state?
• How should surveillance be regulated and to what extent?