Britain: more CCTV than anywhere else on earth...

[max_tranmere]

Walk through central London now for 10 minutes, and you will be filmed on about 40 differnt cameras. I've just seen on Newsnight on BBC2 that one London borough, Wandsworth, has more CCTV than the cities of Dublin, Johannesburg, and Sydney combined! And this is just one area of London! Isn't this scary? An Orwellian society and it has hardly reduced crime. Why do we need these cameras, and do the authorities have the right to do it to the citizens? I don't think they have...

[Vosmith]

If there is no real purpose then 'no' but it seems that they could be using them to better effect. How many are filming zig-zags outside schools? I walk past a school entrance to work everyday and cars are parked all over them causing parents who park appropriately problems in seeing traffic as they cross the road. They'd only need to have the things switched on for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 in the afternoon 40 weeks of the year. I think I've seen a Community PC asking people to move their cars on 2 or three occasions.

[max_tranmere]

Reggie, I know a lot about Orwell. Second, as I said, the presence of CCTV has not reduced crime much so I question its point.

[max_tranmere]

vosmith, CCTV is often there for a specific reason but it is used for other things. Just like so much Government legislation - put in place for a certain purpose then misused by those in charge. Cameras appears to supposedly help catch muggers, then the Police admit they have caught none as a result of the CCTV, but they have spied on lots of parents for pretending to live in an area they dont live in in order to get their kid into a better school, and so on.

[randyandy]

Don't worry about it to much Max our local Tory council has been praised by the Office of the Surveillance Commissionaire for not doing it.

Shame that a young women was mugged in an area that has regularly been turned down for a camera, for no other reason than cost (according to the council) but a long as the civil liberties of the mugger and not the victim weren't affected I suppose it's a fair balance by and for some.

[max_tranmere]

andy, the woman would probably have been mugged anyway. That is the sad reality. CCTV is hardly a deterrent. Areas like Camden Town and Kings Cross in north London (areas I've known all my life) are full of CCTV cameras and full of muggers. The existance of cameras doesn't deter the crackhead who wants to mug the person. There is often not a clear shot of the mugger's face anyway - or they just see his lower leg area and his feet, as the whole thing happens under a large tree and the camera is too high, or something. They are pretty sure who the mugger is, they nick him, but his piece-of-shit solicitor will fuck it all up for the Police and make it almost impossible to send the guy down - all at huge cost to the taxpayer. It is PC policing, and the fact the pengelum has swung too far in favour of the villian, and away from the victim, that is to blame. Remedy that and crime will hugely drop. More cameras hardly affects anything.