Britain is becoming a "surveillance society", where CCTV cameras, credit card analysis and travel movements are used to track people's lives minute by minute, a report published Thursday suggested.
The 140-page document, produced by academic group the Surveillance Studies Network, warns that by 2016 people's lives will be monitored even more than they are now by the government, the public sector and big business.
Britain is ranked bottom of the democratic Western world and alongside Russia for its record on protecting individual privacy in a table published Thursday by Privacy International, a human rights watchdog. The nation has up to 4.2 million CCTV (closed-circuit television) cameras, or about one for every 14 people.
The government is pushing ahead with controversial plans to introduce biometric identity cards, while Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he wants an expansion of the police's DNA database to cover even people released without charge.
As international data protection and privacy commissioners met in London, Britain's information commissioner Richard Thomas said the report was a "clear signal" that the country was becoming a surveillance society.
"It's not just cameras in the street and things like that. It's technology monitoring our movements and activities," he told BBC radio. "Every time we use a mobile phone, use our credit cards, go online, do searches on the Internet, electronic shopping, driving in our cars now: more and more information is being collected, so we're leaving an electronic footprint."
Thomas - whose remit is to promote public access to official information and protect personal data - insisted the authors of the report, which he commissioned, were not scaremongering by painting a "sinister, Orwellian picture". Instead, he said it was the start of a necessary debate about what should be the limits of technology.
"These things have happened, I wouldn't say by stealth, but they have happened gradually," he added, accepting that some schemes may be beneficial, like those used to fight serious crime and terrorism.
"We've got to say: 'Where do we want the lines to be drawn? How much do we want to have surveillance changing the nature of society... "We've got to stand back and see where technology is taking us and making sure we are happy."
The report suggests that by 2016 shoppers will be scanned as they enter stores through tags in their clothes, with information matched to details on loyalty cards to recognise shopping habits.
Cars linked to satellite navigation systems will allow police to monitor speeds and journeys more closely, while workers will be subject to biometric and psychometric tests to weed out unsuitable candidates or health risks, it adds. The report also says "large-scale technological infrastructures are prone to large-scale problems", while Thomas said "unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust". Politicians, civil servants, the police and law enforcement agencies needed to be aware of the need to maintain the public's trust and confidence by not abusing it, he added.