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If you're feeling fenced in some day, you may decide to take a trip to your favorite gambling mecca, where anything goes.

Before you leave, you may want to tell your friends, and while you're at it, let them know what you've been doing lately. Depending on where you are, and whether what you do sounds suspicious, the government may read that e-mail.

If you go to the town square to wave down a taxi to the airport, you may also be waving to a camera housed in what looks like a street lamp. If you look like a wanted criminal, you may draw the attention of a security guard watching a monitor, or the guard across the street.

You can bypass all that by driving to the airport. But if you keep your mobile phone on, the carrier will always know where you are by triangulation using the phone's signal.

At the airport, you may have your face scanned again. This may actually speed your rush to freedom, because if you're a frequent flyer who's volunteered to be prescreened, you'll probably face less scrutiny before you get on the plane.

Finally, you'll reach the gambling mecca. The management there likes people-watching, too. If you've been there before and they suspected you were cheating, your face may set off an alarm. Or if you're just a high-roller who volunteered to be identified automatically, they'll welcome you by name. Then you'll be free.

If it feels like Big Brother is watching you, it may really be your boss, or a big bank ... or your own big brother.

Under Surveillance

On one hand, you're onto something: Use of surveillance tools is growing, and new technology is making them more powerful all the time. On the other, there's a big difference between surveillance in George Orwell's novel 1984 and in the real world of the 21st century. In Orwell's book, the government planted listening devices and two-way televisions called "telescreens" in homes, offices, and public places. These days, the government doesn't have a monopoly on ways to watch, listen to, or find you.

Some such technologies remain in the hands of a few powerful entities and are shrouded in mystery. However, today the spy kits of private companies may contain tools that a potential target might not even know exist. By the same token, some supposed surveillance capabilities are less science than fiction.

Privacy laws vary widely around the world, but the technology trends creating new ways to invade privacy are pretty much universal. Devices are getting smaller and cheaper, networks to access the collected data are getting faster, the Internet is getting bigger, and software for data analysis is getting smarter.

Although different surveillance technologies may be used together, they fit into a few broad categories: tools for watching or listening in the physical world, monitoring activity in cyberspace, locating people or things, and interpreting the information that's collected.

Miniature Machines

Cameras and audio recording devices are getting smaller and their wireless communication capabilities are growing, warns Richard Hunter, a Gartner analyst and author of World Without Secrets: Business, Crime, and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Combined with powerful back-end systems on the other end of those wireless links, they are becoming virtual eyes and ears for just about anyone.

"The miniaturized aware machines ... will not only see and hear what's going on around them, but they will be able to understand it in ways similar to the ways humans understand it," Hunter said.

Wireless digital cameras with microphones and radios, now about the size of a golf ball, within two or three technology generations could be the size of a shirt button and cost $25, Hunter said.

"When you walked down the street, anyone might have multiple such devices on their person," Hunter said. Likewise, "If you have a surveillance device the size of a button, you could have hundreds of them in a room without anyone being aware," he said.

Meanwhile, wireless network connections at speeds of 5 to 20 gigabits per second eventually will allow those devices to constantly send large amounts of data, he added.

Digital video cameras already have slashed the cost of surveillance in public spaces and private buildings in the past few years, putting unsuspecting people in the gaze of a lot more cameras. Digital cameras can be made much smaller than analog ones, said Mihir Kshirsagar, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C. They also produce clearer images, which can be transmitted over long distances in the same ways as any data.

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