Most of us in the West take for granted principles like innocent until proved guilty, common law and habeas corpus (the right to “have your body” free from arbitrary imprisonment). But with the government trying to increase detainment without charge to 42 days and ID cards looming on the horizon, Duncan Barrington argues that we’re not quite as free as we might think.

The list of disappearing liberties in this country is enormous. According to Lib-Dem MP Nick Clegg, Labour had created over 3,000 new crimes by 2001. According to Chris Atkins’ book “Taking Liberties”, The 2000 Terrorism Act allows the police unlimited stop and search powers. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005 outlaws protest within a square kilometre of Parliament. Already, the detention The detention without charge period has been increased to 28 days and Gordon Brown wants to extend it to 42 days, against the advice of almost everyone except Sir Ian Blair. The USA manages with two days, Russia five and Turkey with 7½.

Furthermore, foreign nationals in the UK can be held indefinitely and anyone can be extradited to the US without evidence. Britain has been complicit in torture and Extraordinary Rendition and under the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act any British citizen can be placed under house arrest by order of the Home Secretary on the strength of “reasonable suspicion”.

From 2010, all passport applicants will be issued with ID cards, but if Labour wins the next election it will bring forward legislation to make them compulsory for all UK citizens over the age of 16 whether they have a passport or not. It has been estimated that the ID card scheme will eventually cost £20bn. And yet Dame Stella Rimington, former Head of MI5, recently said: "ID cards may be helpful in all kinds of things but I don't think they are necessarily going to make us any safer.”

So, why all this obsessive amassing of personal information? And can we trust that it will remain secure? We know that mistakes are made – the infamous loss of the disks containing 25 million Child Benefit records, plus six other “significant losses” and an admission of “systemic failure” by the temporary head of HM Customs and Revenue.

Last year 80,000 people suffered identity fraud. The more information about us that is collected and shared out to different departments, the greater the danger of it being misused. The police’s national DNA database has four million records so far and the National Health will potentially have something in the region of 60 million. Already fit seems that fingerprints can be reverse-engineered from digital data. Once an individual’s finger prints, iris scans and DNA have been misappropriated, it will be impossible to re-establish his or her right to take part in normal life. At least PIN numbers and driving licences can be changed. But if your biometric data has been black marketed by Russian internet fraudsters, getting your life back may be next to impossible.

Sometimes clichés say it all: small is beautiful; divide and rule; caveat emptor . . .  And sometimes we have to be clear-sighted about preserving our principles. As that great champion of liberty Tom Paine said, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”