Canon John Roff, a cathedral clergyman, wonders about compulsory ID cards and DNA data banks.

Where are you with compulsory ID cards and DNA banks?

We live in a very anonymous society now, and I don't think we have found a way with coping with that.

When you were known by everyone living within a mile of you there was a kind of brake on the way you behaved.

In the street, if our playing became more than a lark, someone would tell my mum, and she had an effective range of ways that made me regret my action.

Or antisocial behaviour on the bus home was invariably reported to school.

In neither case did we take retaliatory action against those who blew the whistle.

This makes it sound as though I'm concentrating on young people's behaviour - I'm definitely not.

On the train the other day I got GBH to the ear drums for 40 minutes by a bloke in his 50s who was f*ing this and f*ing that all the time.

He didn't have the tiniest bit of regard for anyone else but himself.

If antisocial behaviour could immediately be logged through your ID card - if serious crimes could immediately be checked against a DNA base - would this be the brake we used to have?

Or would this be so anonymous again that people would take retaliatory action against faceless authority - more violence in the street; more antisocial behaviour?

And of course civil liberties activists seem always to be resisting recording 'private' details.

What is the difference between public and private lives?

I reckon I am one 'being'. If something is wrong in public, then it is wrong in private, isn't it? (By wrong, I mean harmful).

In Lent I'm looking at what I do that might be harmful - to others and to me.

Just the business of considering it seems to imply that I am accountable for the way I behave.

I do this examining before God, because although I might be harming myself or others, I am definitely causing hurt to God.

And because God has cherished and nurtured me, then surely I have accountability to God too.