The cultural effects of surveillance?

I'm still thinking about this, though I think there may be something in it, hence I'm sharing it here. "Britain has become a witness culture, inured to watching and being watched. Be it Big Brother or posting friends' antics on YouTube, our leisure time has become increasingly infected with the imperative to expose ourselves and others. No activity, no individual, is deemed valid without an audience."
Which seems to make personal the old philosophical chestnut about whether a tree falling in a deserted forest makes any sound... Is the writer just a modernist individualist unable to see the importance of social construction of identity, or implicitly decrying it? Am I right to think that this is more to do with popular social constructivism than celebrity mimesis?
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | CCTV is no silver bullet - it risks making life less safe: