In successive features in The Argus, Claire Truscott has raised important questions concerning our liberties and responsibilities.

In Caught In The Act Of Life (April 5), she finds 10,000 out of 20,000 CCTV cameras deployed in Brighton and Hove are used by the police, whose difficulties in making the best use of their time and resources she explains in her report from the Sussex Police communications centre (April 14).

Ms Truscott fairly acknowledges the tough "calls" made routinely by her erstwhile temporary colleagues at John Street, having in her earlier article made the tough decision of her own to query the need for the remaining 10,000 CCTV cameras employed in the city by shops, banks and other businesses, including taxis.

With the Government's national ID card scheme now proceeding and likely to fade from the media spotlight other than at those times when the Home Office reports on the implementation of a project which will entail the fingerprinting of 50 million UK adult citizens, I feel Ms Truscott is entitled to ask herself, and us, just how far down the road of "total surveillance" we wish to go.

Born in 1952, I am aware of the general relief which then greeted the abolition of compulsory wartime identity cards and the now increasing demand for their production by a burgeoning postwar army of so-called "little Hitlers".

Having gone in search of Big Brother, I imagine I am not alone in hoping Ms Truscott does not find him.

-S J Williams, Hove