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Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, techno-enthusiasts were proclaiming the death of privacy. “You already have zero privacy; get over it,” Scott McNealy, the chief executive of Sun Microsystems, glibly announced in 1999. In an age of terror, eulogies for privacy are even more frequent, as the British and American governments have drawn on private sector technologies – from surveillance cameras to data mining – to create systems of increasingly ubiquitous surveillance.

But technologies of security don’t have to be designed in ways that threaten privacy. They can instead protect privacy and security at the same time. Consider the evolution of the Naked Machine, a high-tech millimeter wave machine that has been tested at Heathrow. A kind of electronic strip search, the Naked Machine reveals not only metal objects but also plastic and ceramics or anything concealed under clothing. But it also produces a three-dimensional naked image of everyone it scrutinises.

In response to concerns about privacy, the people who invented the Naked Machine developed a simple programming shift. They extracted the images of concealed objects and projected them onto a sexless mannequin. And they scrambled the lurking images of the naked body into an unrecognizable and nondescript blob. This more discreet version of the Naked Machine – call it the Blob Machine – was recently tested at Phoenix Airport in Arizona. It is a kind of silver bullet, protecting security without threatening privacy.

We don't really care about our privacy

Holden Frith: Our privacy is invaded so routinely that we barely notice unless something goes seriously wrong

All of the security technologies that are now proliferating in Britain and American can be designed in ways that look more like the Naked Machine than the Blob Machine. It’s possible, for example, to create systems of oversight for security cameras, so that images from the cameras are only stored for limited periods of time, and can only be accessed to solve violent crimes or terrorists attacks. Data mining systems can be similarly constrained with limits on the use of data: in Germany, for example, the intelligence services can only share with law enforcement evidence of violent crimes, not low level crimes.

The death or rebirth of privacy, ultimately, is not a technological question but a political one. Is there a political constituency for systems of oversight that can protect privacy and security at the same time? Privacy advocates have tended to be more vocal in America than Britain, but both countries are now evolving in similar ways. We have the ability to protect privacy and security. Do we have the will?

Click here to read Holden Frith's response: We don't really care about our privacy

A Battle of Ideas debate on "Privacy is dead. Long live privacy?" will take place on Saturday, October 27 at 15.30

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Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at George Washington University and the author of The Unwanted Gaze and The Naked Crowd