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I remember throughout my years that London had a (negatively) impressive amount of cameras (https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by-number-

I remember throughout my years that London had a (negatively) impressive amount of cameras (https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by-number-of-cctv-cameras https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by...) I don't know how it started, but their own "war on terror" must have helped to hit that top spot. Monitoring internet is just the same. "Eyes everywhere". The technology changed (people walking on the street vs people browsing the internet), but the practice remains. And to show where the focus is (and it's not to serve and protect) the amount of corruption in the UK police (even rapists & murderers) are only caught after years and years, and only after the victims go through hell and high water to get justice. (that last paragraph is a bit provocative - but true)

rsynnott 3y ago
The US actually had more per capita (world rankings are US, China, UK, Germany), though they may be more _visible_ in the UK (particularly after the GDPR, there are differences in rules on covert surveillance). As I understand it, they're nearly all privately owned in both the US and UK, and their installation is driven more by insurance company requirements than anything else.
garblegarble 3y ago
Remember that the overwhelming majority of these cameras in London are privately owned and operated by shopkeepers and homeowners, it's not a massive state-operated surveillance network. They usually have extremely poor image quality and are hooked up to fixed local tape/hard drive recording rather than networked. With that said, there are still a lot of state-operated cameras. Mostly to make money from traffic infraction fines, curiously that's one area where governments don't ever seem to cut police funding :-)