Our lives, our privacy: the 40 items that shaped 40 years of privacy rights showcases key objects – from lawn aerator shoes to mobile phones to the Tesco Clubcard - that represent how our relationship with privacy has evolved since 1984 through cultural, societal, political and technological changes, and how the regulator has evolved with it.

Recognising that privacy is personal and reflects people’s lived experiences, the ICO has left the “final plinth” empty and is encouraging people to put forward an object representing what privacy means to them.

The exhibition, which has launched on the ICO’s website and will open in physical form at Manchester Central Library next April, covers four main themes: data sharing; freedom of information; action the ICO has taken to enforce and protect the public’s rights and how technology has affected privacy.

John Edwards, the information commissioner, said: “Information rights are fundamental human rights. They give us control over our lives and the information we wish to share, and empower us to question and hold our public authorities to account.

“I have my own personal experience of this: helping people – including in my own family – exercise their information rights which exposed the scandal of abuse of children in the New Zealand mental health system in the 1970s. The result – payment of compensation, the issuing of apologies to those affected and the establishment of a Royal Commission looking at abuse in state care – showed the true power of our rights.

“Put simply, our information rights allow us to live freely and protect us from harm.

“The explosion of technology over the past four decades has changed and challenged our relationship with what is private and what isn’t in ways we could never have imagined – but as tech has evolved, so too have the protections put in place by the law. The ICO has been on the frontline of upholding those rights for the last forty years.

“Our exhibition – ‘our lives, our privacy’ – showcases 40 items that have shaped 40 years of information rights. We all recognise the opportunities and challenges that items like smartphones and smart devices bring but items like school dinner trays, Covid face masks, football shirts and food hygiene ratings have just as much of a privacy and information rights story to tell, often with the ICO at the centre of them.”