I DIDN'T break the law last week. Like the greatest number of you, I didn't break the law the week before, or the week before that. Once upon a time I played football flagrantly in places where football was strictly forbidden. Years ago I withheld the poll tax, very politely I thought. But as criminal masterminds go, I'm one of life's innocent bystanders.

So why is someone always trying to take my picture? Why does the government insist I pay for a plastic card just to grant complete strangers instant access to private information? Why does an English high court judge, a Lord Justice Sedley, believe it would be "fairer" if my genetic material, along with the DNA of everyone else who resides in or visits Britain, was held on a giant database?

I could rearrange the questions. Why is someone always watching me? Why is a supposedly democratic government obsessed with gathering information about me? In both cases, part of the answer is either downright scary or (I can't quite decide) profoundly offensive. The presumption of innocence is being discarded. Everyone is a suspect.

Imagine if they posted two goons at your doorstep day and night. Imagine if you were followed routinely on your way to work, if a minute digital record was kept of your every pursuit, habit, purchase and movement. A decent loyalty card can do the job, but at least you get points in exchange for your soul. Govern-ment agencies prefer simply to demand, and what they do not demand they take.

The CCTV camera, the snitch in your street, is an exquisite example. As privacy campaigners never tire of pointing out, you are required by law to buy a licence if you want to watch Neighbours. If, however, you want to make your own entertainment and watch your own neighbours through a system of linked CCTV cameras, no licence is required.

As of January 2004, in the most recent figures I could unearth, 4,285,000 of the little beasts were operational in the UK. That's 20% of the planetary total. How does the rest of the world manage? On the other hand, when did Britain become such a hell-hole as to require one in five of all the surveillance cameras on earth?

Perhaps I miss the point. Perhaps, as government likes to claim, CCTV is a crime-prevention without peer. Clearly, with 4,285,000 of the things, we must now be a country in which no-one ever dares to break the law. Right?

How do you mean "not quite"? If all those millions of simple cameras have failed, perhaps we had better speed up the introduction of "neural network facial recognition", "biosensors", and - "multimedia image databases", whatever they may be. Never mind the EU Convention on Human Rights. The government and the police - and lots of private companies - can't wait.

According to human right watchdog Liberty, the Home Office has spent 78% of its crime prevention budget on CCTV over the past decade or so. The Home Office has not, meanwhile, spent much time establishing if cameras deter crimes or detect crimes, perhaps because it can guess the answer. Various international assessments have been "inconclusive". By next year, nevertheless, the British CCTV industry will be worth £1.1 billion, all of it dedicated to telling us after the fact that something nasty happened somewhere.

Nobody, to my knowledge, has compared the usefulness of CCTV to anything as mundane as improved street-lighting. The cameras are, in fact, a technological solution to a political problem. That would be our old friend "appearing to be doing something". The prying eyes are intended to reassure. They are supposed to convey to those who feel vulnerable the sense that someone is watching over them. What they in fact convey is a less comforting message: be paranoid.

I don't need the help. Sometimes I would rather take my chances than be treated as a suspect every time I buy a packet of (still legal) cigarettes. If, roughly speaking, one camera exists for every 14 people in Britain, the threat of crime - overstated, misrepresented and exploited for political ends - has become a collective fantasy. Real crime continues, obviously enough, but crime's ultimate victim - that would be liberty of the person - is twice abused thanks to CCTV. For every 14 persons there is a guardian resembling a jailer.

The odd part, odd to me at least, is that most people are none too bothered. There is no widespread sense of loss or infringement. Councils all over Britain have been installing CCTV systems as fast as they can procure the cash. Quiet villages are now "protected" and real crime, as the police admit, is "displaced". Standard answer: erect still more cameras. Meanwhile, one brainless mantra fits all. "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear."

If I have done nothing wrong, which is to say illegal, what I happen to do is no-one's business. If my body language is being "assessed" by some unseen operator for clues as to what might be going through my mind, however, I am, whatever anyone pretends, being investigated as a potential criminal. To be law-abiding is no longer an excuse.

The national DNA database is if anything a better example. Yet again, Britain is a world-leader, with genetic records of more than four million individuals being held. That's a lot of criminals, you may say, and we had best keep tabs on them. DNA matching has helped police to solve numerous crimes, after all. Again, the majority hold the view that another slice of liberty is a price worth paying for a scientific marvel.

The trouble is, particularly in England and Wales (Scottish practice is better controlled) many of the records held have nothing to do with crime or criminals. They are, at best, "just in case" samples of innocent people. In England, police can take DNA without permission from anyone who has been arrested for recordable offences. The profiles are not destroyed later, even if the person is acquitted.

Try that again. Test it against any definition of justice: "acquitted of all charges". Despite that, ministers have been toying with the idea - again, England not Scotland, for now - of allowing police to take samples from people arrested for non-recordable offences. Heinous stuff, such as littering. Why would the police wish to waste their time in such a manner? Just in case. And because the only good data-base is a complete, universal database of every man, woman and child.

Last week, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics objected. It called for a system roughly on the Scottish model, in which only actual criminals are sampled and records are later destroyed. The LibDems, bless them, meanwhile passed a motion at their annual conference demanding the same measures, along with tighter control of CCTV, improvements to the Data Protection Act, and the repeal of the Identity Cards Act 2006.

A succession of government ministers have said that our plastic pals are essential. The state will require only 50-odd pieces of intimate information and the scheme (along with a National Identity Register) will cost us, on the latest estimate, a mere £19bn. Few IT experts believe it will be remotely secure. As Liberty reminds us, the Madrid bombers all carried valid ID cards.

At minimum, there is the ancient paradox. Who destroys liberty to enhance liberty? More to the point, who destroys liberty for the sake of crackpot schemes that cost billions and justify none of the claims made for them? You could ask a harder question: which is the bigger threat? Remote risk in your daily life, or a government determined to intrude into every aspect of your existence?

Privacy and the liberty of the person are much the same thing. Lose one and you lose the other. If you do not think that's such a big deal, consider this: once they're gone, they're gone for good. Console yourself, if you like, with the thought that no harm can come to the law- abiding. For them, that's not who you are. You are a crime waiting to happen. Guilty until you can claw back your innocence.