I spy the beginnings of a potential tyranny. This week messages from an international software supplier have popped up on my laptop. 

They offered me some new services. What they did not provide was a button which said ‘No, thank you. I don’t want them’.

I could either accept the services immediately or delay my response for three days, but I could not refuse them. In short, the system was designed to force me to accept their proposal. It left me at the mercy of Big Tech.

Well… only for a moment, because I discovered that by switching my laptop off and on again, I could outwit the system... for the time being.

But it is not just software suppliers. By chance, my internet connections also went down. Two phone calls lasting three hours with my phone company did not resolve the problem. 

It even involved me crawling around with screwdrivers dismantling and reassembling, at their request, my phone connection boxes. 

But there were plenty of messages from the call centre thanking me for my patience and frequent expostulations of ‘no worries’.  Again, I was at the mercy of Big Tech. 

So, when I read that facial recognition cameras, like those already stationed at biometric passport desks, might be used to provide information to the police for the deterrence of shop lifting, my anxieties are raised.

How can I, an innocent person, be certain that the camera systems will not go berserk, like my phone and laptop, providing the police with incorrect data?

Innocent as we are, might we have to face the rigours of the legal system. It smacks of unpleasant and threatening surveillance.

One of the blessings of living in the United Kingdom lies in the principle that we are innocent until found guilty. Why is that sacrosanct principle being so tyrannically eroded?