Time after time I look back and think how much better life was in the 1970's.

In the past forty years it seems that nearly everything has got worse and the worst influence on society has been the dreadful computer and electronic gadgets.

In the early 1990's those awful CCTV cameras came into society watching over us and recording our every movement.

Naturally the powers that be were overjoyed and wired up the town centre so they can watch the minions and peasants as they go about their daily business.

Of course CCTV cameras were brought in under the banner of crime prevention which was very hard to argue against. However in practice the pixelated pictures the cameras record are virtually useless in crime detection.

Having a picture is no good unless you know who the offender is especially if the person committing the misdemeanour is not known to the authorities.

Back in 1998 the powers that be introduced the photo card driving licence so in theory they know what everyone looks like.

In the early 2000's technology had moved on and the citizens of the world happily contributed their own pictures to a book of faces on the internet.

Then cars merrily drove around the streets taking pictures of everyone's house all of which are stored on computer and accessible to the world.

Thanks to facial recognition technology in theory it would be possible to link the CCTV cameras to the pictures of everyone stored on the book of faces, and driving licences and thus automatically identify offenders as they appear on CCTV committing crime.

Indeed it would be like automatic number plate recognition (APNR) but instead of cars it would be people being identified.

Of course the CCTV cameras can't be everywhere and crime still takes place meaning the authorities are no further in the battle against crime. Naturally the youngster found a way around the CCTV cameras by wearing hoodies.

Thanks to modern portable phones people can be tracked using GPS satellites and the applications on the phones can suck up the contact from the phone together with location informaiton and cart them off to distant computers.

Recently revelations emerged that the powers the be were gathering the data from some well known international web sites and using the information for their own purposes.

Our world is one where technology is the master and the fools who follow the train of technology are steadily eroding their own privacy.

So what's the latest privacy busting contrivance from the boffins in their labs who push technology forward?

Well it seems now phones come with fingerprint scanners. How long will it be before the powers that be start harvesting the fingerprints stored in the phone?

Passwords and pictures can be changed but fingerprints can not.

No doubt many will readily scan in their fingerprints and in years to come unwittingly add themselves to a secret fingerprint database somewhere giving rise to APNR for people using fingerprint information.

As far as I'm concerned fingerprint recognition is a step too far.

If things carry on as they it won't be long before one has to wear gloves just to answer the phone or risk my fingerprints being sent as part of the call.

What do you think?

*My next exciting and enthralling blog will be published on Thursday evening around 8pm.