Privacy and Surveillance
Wednesday 21 May 2008
Professor Nigel Gilbert of the University of Surrey and Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee for their Inquiry on 'A Surveillance Society' recently chaired an IET Surrey Network event organised in conjunction with the University’s Educational Liaison Centre (ELC) that was held in the School of Management Lecture Theatre. An audience of around 200 people ensured a lively and engaging debate with the associated panel of experts.
Panel members included Jonathan Bamford, Assistant Commissioner at the Information Commissioner's Office, David Birch, Consult Hyperion and columnist for the Guardian's 'Second Sight', Tom Ilube, from Garlik, an online security firm and Martyn Thomas, Professor of Software Engineering at the Oxford University Computer Laboratory and founder of Thomas Associates, consultants in software engineering.
Following his initial presentation Professor Gilbert took a poll of the audience on five key questions about personal privacy and surveillance issues. At this point a significant number of people were fairly relaxed about personal privacy issues, essentially accepting that surveillance and data collection were a necessary evil and that if you had nothing to hide you had nothing to fear.
A fascinating debate then followed. Audience anecdotes and expert evidence from the panellists opened eyes to the dangers of sleep-walking into a society whereby ill-thought out data collection and poor security was literally leading to matters of life and death for completely 'innocent' members of the public. At the conclusion of the debate the repeated poll showed that the entire audience had unanimously swung to a position of serious concern about personal privacy.
The next IET and ELC collaboration will be for the Christmas Lecture for Schools and Colleges on Wednesday 3 December when the topic will be the exploration of the planet Mars. A Mars Rover will be on hand to help illustrate this engaging topic.
Media Enquiries
Peter La, Press Office at the University of Surrey, Tel: +44 (0)1483 689191, or Email mediarelations@surrey.ac.uk