Since the first stories revealing the extent of mass surveillance appeared in the Guardian in June 2013, the Snowden files have helped to shine a light on the government agencies who monitor the online activity of their citizens and the companies who collect their customers’ personal data. Julia Powles (University of Cambridge), Mike Harris (Don’t Spy On Us), Josh Levy (Access Now) and Katarzyna Szymielewicz (Panoptykon Foundation) in a panel chaired by James Ball (The Guardian) explore who owns our data, how to take control of our online lives and ask what is the future of our personal data.

Our data shadows and digital dandruff can be used to track and record our activities online. Even if there is nothing to hide, this can become problematic. Katarzyna Szymielewicz discuss these problems with Jeremy Malcolm (Electronic Frontiers Foundation), Joana Varon (Centre for Technology and Society in Rio de Janeiro), Niels ten Oever (Article 19) and Harry Halpin (World Wide Web Consortium - W3C).

Every year more and more public money is invested in surveillance technologies – everything from drones and video surveillance to data mining software for public administration. Recently, the Polish government announced a new programme of co-financing surveillance cameras in the schools.

There seems to be little overlap between “open government” and “surveillance state”. Public security –the most quoted justification behind surveillance – is routinely presented as the exemption from the expectation of state transparency. While we have seen significant developments towards more openness in such sensitive areas as public procurement, health management or IT infrastructure, when it comes to “our security” all rational arguments seem to fail.

Panoptykon presents four short animated movies about family life "under surveillance". Series intend is to show how surveillance affects all of us: how use of modern tools such us cameras, ID cards, databases, scripts, and ad tracking tools - control all spheres of our lives.