A chance encounter with a talking lamp-post got Ross Clark thinking: is there any escape from Britain's growing surveillance society? He set himself a challenge: could he get to Southend without Big Brother knowing where he had gone?

In this entertaining and highly revealing account of his attempt to dodge Britain's 4.2 million CCTV cameras and other forms of surveillance, Ross Clark lays bare the astonishing amount of data which is kept on us by the state and by commercial organisations, and asks whom should we fear most: the government agencies who are spying on us - or the criminals who seem to prosper in the swirling fog of excessive data-collection.

Among his discoveries are:

- An information company in Nottingham seemed to know he has cherry trees in his garden.

- If he flies to New York, the FBI will keep a record of what he had for lunch.

- 2,700 people are wrongly recorded as criminals on Britain's Police National Computer.

- 70 Americans have been implanted with microchips to help identify them if they become lost and confused.

- British companies are routinely vetting potential employees by searching MySpace for evidence of drunken antics and sexual perversion.

- It will take 905 man-years to issue every British citizen with an ID card.