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Following suit, UK unveiled plans to have 625M surveillance cameras.

by infinity0 9y ago

ashleysmithgpu 9y ago
10 for each person in the UK? ... I wouldn't put it past this government
- gaius 9y ago
  It started during the Bliar years (not that that excuses this government from continuing with it). Remember the national biometric database?
  - oliwarner 9y ago
    Err, no. It started in the 1960s. There were massive city-wide programmes up and running well before Blair. The IRA (or their reactionary counterparts) are who you should blame for the amount of CCTV in London, but it all comes from the same place. If it wasn't them, it would have been something else.
    - escapologybb 9y ago
      ^This My first memory of surveillance in any kind of large-scale was in the early 1990s, well before Tony Blair. It was when the Met police put up the "Ring of Steel" around the centre of London to stop the volunteers blowing things up. Anyway, too much surveillance bad. Unless they use it to find your phone, in which case too much surveillance good. One might think it's somewhat of a nuanced issue!
kalleboo 9y ago
I just tried to search for how many surveillance cameras there already are in the UK, and by the time I got to "number of surveillance cameras", Safari popped up a Siri suggestion for the London Wikipedia article... http://mayoyo.tokyo/jK7.jpg http://mayoyo.tokyo/jK7.jpg If anyone is curious "The British Security Industry Association (BSIA) estimates there are between 4-5.9 million cameras"
- infinity0 9y ago
  A quick google search suggests that China currently has about 20 million cameras, so the UK is actually not far behind. Given the population, there are actually more cameras per UK citizen than there are per Chinese citizen.
  - buro9 9y ago
    And yet, when I was the victim of a hit and run incident in central London we were unable to locate a single working camera that could provide any usable evidence. The vast majority either do not work, or are privately owned and when enquired about (difficult in itself as there are so many parties to contact once the owner is identified, and they likely do not have direct access and need to speak to someone else) have extremely useless retention periods that meant no footage survived enough time to request it.
agumonkey 9y ago
Gonna start my surveillance free luxury city and enjoy my new rich-itude.

Following suit, UK unveiled plans to have 625M surveillance cameras.

ashleysmithgpu 9y ago

10 for each person in the UK? ... I wouldn't put it past this government

gaius 9y ago
It started during the Bliar years (not that that excuses this government from continuing with it). Remember the national biometric database?
- oliwarner 9y ago
  Err, no. It started in the 1960s. There were massive city-wide programmes up and running well before Blair. The IRA (or their reactionary counterparts) are who you should blame for the amount of CCTV in London, but it all comes from the same place. If it wasn't them, it would have been something else.
  - escapologybb 9y ago
    ^This My first memory of surveillance in any kind of large-scale was in the early 1990s, well before Tony Blair. It was when the Met police put up the "Ring of Steel" around the centre of London to stop the volunteers blowing things up. Anyway, too much surveillance bad. Unless they use it to find your phone, in which case too much surveillance good. One might think it's somewhat of a nuanced issue!

kalleboo 9y ago

I just tried to search for how many surveillance cameras there already are in the UK, and by the time I got to "number of surveillance cameras", Safari popped up a Siri suggestion for the London Wikipedia article... http://mayoyo.tokyo/jK7.jpg http://mayoyo.tokyo/jK7.jpg If anyone is curious "The British Security Industry Association (BSIA) estimates there are between 4-5.9 million cameras"

infinity0 9y ago
A quick google search suggests that China currently has about 20 million cameras, so the UK is actually not far behind. Given the population, there are actually more cameras per UK citizen than there are per Chinese citizen.
- buro9 9y ago
  And yet, when I was the victim of a hit and run incident in central London we were unable to locate a single working camera that could provide any usable evidence. The vast majority either do not work, or are privately owned and when enquired about (difficult in itself as there are so many parties to contact once the owner is identified, and they likely do not have direct access and need to speak to someone else) have extremely useless retention periods that meant no footage survived enough time to request it.

agumonkey 9y ago

Gonna start my surveillance free luxury city and enjoy my new rich-itude.