
The question is: how much of an infringement on privacy are they? Could these intelligent networksbe used by governments, criminals or terrorists to undermine privacy or commit crimes? From CCTVs to blogging, from cookies to RFID tags, we are sleepwalking into a new state of global hypersurveillance. And when even cans of Coke are connected to the internet, the risk of someone misusing this information is very high indeed. Kieron O''Hara is Senior Research Fellow in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK. Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton, UK, and was President of the British Computer Society in 2006-7.
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