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Programme 1: Monday 25 May, 9.00-10.00pm, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two

Richard Bilton looks at how we are all being watched by the state.

In Middlesbrough, he discovers a city that's embraced CCTV and has been praised by the Government as a model for how the rest of us should live.

The CCTV nerve centre reveals a hidden world of the watchers, who claim their network of 200 cameras has brought huge benefits to the community.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Secretary, Jacqui Smith, tells the programme that CCTV "helps people feel more secure", but the programme looks at whether a camera on every street corner is a price worth paying for this comfort blanket.

From a police helicopter in the air to an anonymous white van parked by the side of the road – Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras are watching and recording our journeys.

Our trips – no matter how mundane – are recorded every day and the data is kept for at least two years. The system already reads up to ten million number plates a day and is expanding.

Police say only criminals need worry – "innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it."

But Richard Bilton meets a couple who have been targeted by ANPR cameras despite having done nothing wrong and finds that its regulation is less than certain.

What better use of CCTV than making sure your children are safe? One nursery spent £10,000 on a CCTV system which promised complete security with the added benefit that parents could pay a fee to get a password enabling them to watch their children on the internet.

However, the system was flawed and until it was shut down images of children at the nursery could be accessed by anybody on the internet.

The programme also looks at just how secure is the data that's kept on us all – including even military secrets.

Richard meets a former RAF servicemen with security clearance, whose personal data was lost three times by the Ministry of Defence, and hears more about his story.

The programme shows how surveillance is increasing all the time and reaching into more and more areas of our lives.

More than 700 Government agencies are now authorised to access records of our communications under the same legislation used to tackle terrorism.

In 2000 there were just nine law enforcement agencies with those powers.

Teenage undercover agents are being used by councils more and more to carry out surveillance.

Richard Bilton meets a 16-year-old who has been working undercover since she was 11 for the Trading Standards department to tackle anti-social behaviour, teenage drinking and knife crime.

Richard goes on Operation Scooby Doo with Rocky, a four-legged council spy, looking for dog walkers who allow their dogs to poop but don't scoop.

The Government says this kind of covert operation is no longer justified, but the council claims it's just doing what their residents want.

• Producer and Director: Steven Grandison
• Assistant Producer: Dan Murdoch

Programme 2: Monday 1 June, 9.00-10.00pm, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two

From watching our neighbours, to being watched at work, online, and on the move, surveillance is everywhere. Information about every bit of our lives is valuable to somebody.

Richard Bilton meets those who have made our private lives their business – ex-soldiers watching suspected workplace thieves, corporate spooks trawling companies' rubbish for lucrative secrets and suppliers in the booming trade in tracking devices, secret cameras and hidden microphones.

And he delves in to the criminal underworld of hackers and blaggers who steal and sell our information.

Surveillance can benefit us all, helping make businesses more profitable and the services we use more convenient. But, as Richard discovers, surveillance has a darker side too.

The programme tells the story of an employee who was monitored every minute of his working day and later wrongfully sacked after his employer looked back over months of his records, claiming the data showed he had been systematically avoiding work.

Richard meets an internet user feeling the chill of being watched and a demand for money from lawyers. He is accused of illegally sharing a computer game online on the basis of surveillance evidence he disputes.

As surveillance technology becomes ever more powerful, affordable and available, it has never been so easy to watch others.

But our love of mobile phones and computers allows surveillance to reach deeper in to our own lives than ever before.

Across Britain, Richard reveals how money is made from watching us and is surprised at the speed by which our private lives have quietly become everybody's business.

• Producer and Director: Tristan Quinn
• Assistant Producer: Kate Quine

Programme 3: Monday 8 June, 9.00-10.00pm, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two

In programme three Richard Bilton speaks to leading figures from the shadowy world of secret intelligence to find out about modern surveillance and to see just how effective it is in tackling serious crime and terrorism.

One intelligence insider tells Richard that "it's a constant arms race" between the state and criminals as more advanced technology becomes available.

The Government says the threat from terrorism is real and severe. The security services have expanded rapidly since the 7/7 London bombings.

The programme investigates how the Government now wants to use all of us in the fight against terrorism and how it wants to stop people becoming terrorists in the first place.

It is not just terrorists who are viewed as threats. Those who favour direct action, such as environmental groups, are also targeted by the police. But, as Richard Bilton finds out, they too have begun to employ elaborate anti-surveillance techniques.

Modern surveillance increasingly relies on computer databases which have the capacity to record what we all do. Whether we like it or not, the details of all of our lives are being stored on databases. Not just criminals and terrorists but everyone.

We now have a network of number plate recognition cameras, one of the biggest DNA databases in the world, and the Government has plans for a super database logging all our phone calls, the location where they were made, our emails and our internet searches.

Richard Bilton talks to former insiders who question the Government's argument that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, and who say it is an argument for total surveillance and a total security state.

• Producer and Director: James Giles
• Assistant Producer: Charles Young