Anonymous

somewhere in the UK

Sceptic

Chakrabarti is right to counsel extreme caution, but I fear we are already too late. All that has stopped governments carrying out mass monitoring (and hence management) of populations in the past has been the sheer difficulty of doing it.
As more and more activity creates digital traces it becomes easier and easier to accumulate and analyse activity on a large scale. Now that the majority of communication is digital that surveillance is very easy, save for the staggering volumes involved.
The latter merely makes technology providers salivate and work harder and harder to argue for the business and governments to collect and analyse to their heart's content.
Once that becomes routine it WILL be used increasingly against many people other than "terrorists" - as we have already seen with anti-terror laws being used to carry out surveillance to counter dog fouling.
We urgently need an active discussion about the kind of society we want to be living in over the coming years. Unfortunately there is too much complacency and too much ignorance about what is no possible. The future is going to be different in some not very pleasant ways!