Plenty of debate since the USA Today report earlier this month that the national security Agency was using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to collect phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, most of whom weren't suspected of any crime. This affects not only households but businesses as well.

But it's not just the telcos who are aiding and abetting the law enforcement and security bureaucrats.



A disturbing report in the Wall Street Journal last week revealed that banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers were now being approached by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. If you are not a WSJ subscriber, you can read the piece by clicking here.

The demands are on the increase. Susan Hackett, a senior vice president and top attorney for the Association of Corporate Counsel told the WSJ: "Corporate counsel that used to see law-enforcement-related requests five times a year are now getting them sometimes dozens of times a day."

All this has profound implications for businesses who not only have to look after their interests but those of their clients and customers as well. Thomas Kostigen from MarketWatch raises his concerns in his piece: The right to speak and not be heard.

No surprises then that novelist Jonathan Raban is now asking whether we have mutated into a surveillance society.

Certainly it seems to be part of a trend with a blog entry I did earlier this year on how the US Justice Department was moving to extend bugs into the boardroom.

Are we becoming a surveillance society? And is Raban right when he says that no-one really seems to care anymore?