Many of you will remember those words, spoken by HAL, the computer that decided to have a mind if its own in the film 2001: A space Odyssey.

What goes around comes around, and now we have the government's surveillance Minister (who knew we had one of those?) saying that "the technology has overtaken our ability to regulate it".

He's talking about HD CCTV cameras that can recognise a human face at a distance of half a mile. There will be over 129,000 of them in use in the UK by the end of this year, and as many as 3.7 million by 2016.

There is fear of a public backlash, and Andrew Rennison - the aforementioned Minister - wants to have more control over the way these cameras are used. At the moment he has virtually no power to do anything if people complain.

The Home Office says Mr Rennison would develop a new code of practice to "empower the public to shine a light on those who operate camera systems in public places, challenging them to show the use of these systems is justified, proportionate and effective".

So that's all OK then.