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I've read that London has a lot of surveillance cameras, but most are privately owned, not directly controlled by the government nor the police. Is it true? Who

I've read that London has a lot of surveillance cameras, but most are privately owned, not directly controlled by the government nor the police. Is it true? Who control them? How it works?

lvturner 7y ago
Say for example you own a small store and you want to put a camera near the cash register, both to ensure employees don't steal from it and to capture the faces of anyone who may attempt a robbery (armed or otherwise) - this would be a privately owned surveilence camera, now suppose you own a chain of these similar stores, you now own and operate a surveilence camera network...
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Or just anywhere trouble might start. Every late night food place, convenience store, club, anywhere like that I expect to see a camera. Grocery stores too (because they handle a tremendous amount of cash). Human memory is both unreliable anyway and motivated in operation. CCTV acts as an impartial witness. It doesn't automatically have all the facts, but it is reliable and unmotivated. Knowing this impartial witness has their backs enables your employees to obey policy without worrying about how that will be remembered. The operators are supposed to do some paperwork establishing they've thought about how they're going to treat all this data, and if they want to put CCTV somewhere you'd normally expect to be private (e.g. a changing room or toilet) they need to tell the cops what they're doing and why (e.g. to investigate a specific employee suspected of theft) before they do it otherwise that's a crime.
- tunap 7y ago
  To expand on this, all the corporate big box retail chains have such networks & add AI facial recognition to their ubiquitous feeds. It has been like this for a couple decades now. Anecdote: A manager of a Fortune 50 location I was working at received a call from HQ to keep an eye on a known perp who entered the store no more than 5 minutes prior to the call. Very impressive & very scary.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    Wow, that's really scary, the "corporate overlord" trope is real! More scary than the "Big Brother" trope we are all familiar with...

I've read that London has a lot of surveillance cameras, but most are privately owned, not directly controlled by the government nor the police. Is it true? Who control them? How it works?

lvturner 7y ago

Say for example you own a small store and you want to put a camera near the cash register, both to ensure employees don't steal from it and to capture the faces of anyone who may attempt a robbery (armed or otherwise) - this would be a privately owned surveilence camera, now suppose you own a chain of these similar stores, you now own and operate a surveilence camera network...

tialaramex 7y ago
Or just anywhere trouble might start. Every late night food place, convenience store, club, anywhere like that I expect to see a camera. Grocery stores too (because they handle a tremendous amount of cash). Human memory is both unreliable anyway and motivated in operation. CCTV acts as an impartial witness. It doesn't automatically have all the facts, but it is reliable and unmotivated. Knowing this impartial witness has their backs enables your employees to obey policy without worrying about how that will be remembered. The operators are supposed to do some paperwork establishing they've thought about how they're going to treat all this data, and if they want to put CCTV somewhere you'd normally expect to be private (e.g. a changing room or toilet) they need to tell the cops what they're doing and why (e.g. to investigate a specific employee suspected of theft) before they do it otherwise that's a crime.
tunap 7y ago
To expand on this, all the corporate big box retail chains have such networks & add AI facial recognition to their ubiquitous feeds. It has been like this for a couple decades now. Anecdote: A manager of a Fortune 50 location I was working at received a call from HQ to keep an eye on a known perp who entered the store no more than 5 minutes prior to the call. Very impressive & very scary.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  Wow, that's really scary, the "corporate overlord" trope is real! More scary than the "Big Brother" trope we are all familiar with...