Snowden speaks: NSA spies create 'databases of ruin' on innocent folks

> There is very little evidence, if any at all, that the domestic phone and other metadata and its analysis has led to any general loss or infringement of personal liberty.

Perhaps you could further define what you mean by personal liberty.

I would classify it, in this instance, as the ability to be anonymous. The right to a private life. The right to disappear. As human beings, we need this right.

To all those out their in the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear camp", I would ask if you would be happy to walk down the street naked? Would you mind someone watching you take a dump? How about an audience whilst having sex with the missus? How about someone poking around in your diary?

For something a little more down to earth, how about someone following you wherever you go? In this case it's not a person, but a machine. You might find it creepy having a real someone tailing you all day, but your mobile phone is doing it for you. Don't let the creepyness fool you. The wrongness of it is *not* that there is a person. It is that it is being done at all.

People think that 1984 is creepy and somehow repugnant because people are doing it. The truth is, that was never how it was going to be. 1984 is happening now and the machines are doing it on a scale that people would never be able to. It is subtle but the fingers of surveillance are going to be everywhere. We have 'leccy meters monitoring what's going on in the house. Your mobile phone is tracking you as you move about. So much communication these days is done entirely electronically. Business is done over the Internet including your banking. Almost all public spaces have a camera poring over them shortly to have face recognition scanning to look for crims. Police will have the same tech strapped to their tunics. Speed camers can now store the registration plates of all that pass. Public transit systems more often than not these days use some kind of smart card which logs all your journeys centrally. Google is trying to convince us to carry cameras around in our glasses: they don't download imagery to the Internet yet (or do they?) but automatic syncing to your Google Plus account will surely follow and you can bet your bottom dollor, it will integrate with face recognition to help you identify your friends, or friends of friends.

We are a social animal and we like, in the main, to socialise. However, more and more we need to be able to disappear just to retain our sanity. Very shortly, that will be a pipe dream.