The Home Office is considering radical plans to develop a centralised surveillance system to track in real-time every kind of electronic activity undertaken by citizens.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week proposed a law that will mean communications companies will have to keep logs of internet usage and make this information available to the police.
Social networking technologies and the use of web mash-ups are among the top 10 disruptive technologies that will make headway in enterprises in the next four years, according to research firm Gartner.
Google is countering European privacy laws over its forthcoming Street View service by blurring the faces of people caught by its cameras, reports the Guardian.