UK citizens will be tracked by RFID tags embedded in their clothes and have their movements monitored by unmanned "flying eyes in the sky" using facial recognition systems within 10 years, the nation's data protection watchdog has claimed.

In a new report entitled a Surveillance Society, information commissioner Richard Thomas predicts a world in 2016 where technology is extensively and routinely used to track and record people's activities and movements.

Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.

He said in the report: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us."

In 2016 Thomas predicts shoppers will be scanned as they enter stores and their clothes recognised through unique RFID tags embedded in them. This data will be matched with loyalty card data to affect the way they are treated as they do their shopping, with some given preferential treatment over others.

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Surveillance & Society