The NSA's 'Prism' surveillance program allegedly allows it to monitor emails, internet 'chatter' on Skype, AOL, YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter and collect data directly from these servers and other technology companies. The incredulity that America has the ability to monitor what goes on in Cyberspace reveals a basic misunderstanding that online activity can ever be private.

Four years ago a somewhat unknown Australian hacker with some new ideas about the future of journalism gave the opening keynote at HAR2009. His site was called Wikileaks and some of us had a hunch that this concept might be going places. We had no idea just how far that would be...

We live in a world where infrared cameras can scan for drunks and the government has revived the so-called 'Snooper's Charter' to track every email, c...

Facebook and twitter came at a pivotal time in history. The chicken or the egg theory can be applied here in asking: Did twitter and facebook help revolutions grow, or did they help track people involved in uprisings? (In both the case of the Arab uprisings and the Occupy movement.) I would say both.

How harmful is it if the government accesses your communications data? Communications data used to just mean telephone calls: who you called and when. Now it could include what websites you visit, your geo-location, which social network you're part of and who you've contacted.

I have written over the years about the encroaching surveillance state, the spread of CCTV and the increasing use of drones in our skies. When the North East of England introduced talking CCTV cameras that could bark orders at passing pedestrians in 2008, I thought that we were fast approaching the reductio ad absurdum point - and indeed this subject has raised a wry laugh from audiences around the world ever since.

Despite warnings from digital rights groups, privacy advocates and experts in the tech world, the government has gone ahead with their plans for blanket surveillance measures on the internet, including controversial practices such as deep packet inspection.