Peter Hain and Dafydd Wigley have both been the subject of state surveillance - Lord Wigley's phone was tapped when MI5 hunted the holiday home arsonists in the 80s, and Lord Hain was watched by British and South African security teams.
So the Peers were keen to find out more about the current state of surveillance from Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Carmarthen-born and Harlech raised, Emeritus Professor of History at Edinburgh University.
His new book 'We Know All About You' is subtitled 'The story of surveillance in Britain and America' and includes details of both state and private techniques for watching people and organisations. As Lord Wigley says in the programme: "If you thought surveillance was a weapon of the Cold War - or simply in the imagination of thriller writers - think again." Lord Hain describes being told in 2002 that MI5 had held a file on him after he had been under surveillance and told him his had never been regarded as a communist agent. Prof Jeffreys-Jones discusses how there had been a communist witch hunt in the UK in the 1950s and after, but that it had been more low key than America's McCarthyism.
He describes modern surveillance as 'spying on a mass scale', with technology helping to ensure that information of many more people can be accessed and stored. Show less