Somebody is watching you 

A. The first CCTV cameras appeared in Britain in 1953, and by the 1960s there were already a few cameras in major streets in London. Today, there are more than four million CCTV cameras across the country. That's one camera for every fourteen people. The cameras are there to film dangerous or illegal behavior. With new software, they can automatically recognize the faces of known criminals, and a new kind of CCTV in Netherlands can detect angry voices and automatically warn the police of trouble. But these cameras don't just watch criminals; they watch all of us, almost all of the time. Every time we go into a shop, or use a cash point machine, or travel on public transport a camera records our actions.

B. The amount of surveillance in towns and cities across Britain is increasing. Some goods in shops now have RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags attached to them. When you pick up one of these items, the RFID tag sends a radio message to a CCTV camera and the camera starts filming you. Shops say that this technology helps to catch shoplifters - but only by treating everybody as a potential criminal.

C. Cameras and tags are not the only ways of monitoring our actions. Every time you make or receive a call on your mobile phone, the phone company knows the number of the phone you are calling and how long the call lasts. It is even possible to work out your exact location. The police often use this information when they're investigating serious crimes.

D. And what about satellites? Are they watching us from space? How much can they see? Anybody with a computer can download Google Earth and get satellite photos of the entire world. Perhaps governments are using even more powerful satellites to watch their citizens.

E. Even when you are at home, you are not necessarily safe from surveillance. When you use your computer to visit websites, you are probably sending and receiving cookies without realizing it. Cookies transfer information from your computer to the website and, in theory, could record which websites you visit. Or perhaps somebody has secretly installed a keystroke logging program on your computer. These record every letter that you type on the keyboard: your passwords, your emails, your bank account numbers and more. Modern technology is making it easier and easier to stay in contact, but it is also making it nearly impossible for us to hide. 

1. Eyes in the sky.

2. What are the CCTV cameras for?

3. Internet surveillance.

4. They know who you are calling.

5. Watching shoppers.

Today, there are CCTV cameras which