data mining

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

Data mining is certainly in vogue with government agencies and the private sector, so why not make something available to the individual consumer? A patent issued this month goes one step beyond casual Google-stalking, and would allow users to identify anyone from a petty criminal to a dangerous terrorist.

Banks and other businesses are to be sold access to personal information stored on the Government's ID cards database.

Ministers want to raise hundreds of millions towards the £540million a year cost of running the controversial scheme.