I'm always seeing stories about cameras watching people in the UK. Street corners, subways, buses, even a story claiming that they want to put them in the homes of "problem families." I assume places of business are all cameraed up just like in the U.S. I've seen stories that cops can actually yell at you from the cameras all around in the UK too. How common are these cameras and does their presence disturb you at all?
Here in London, they're absolutely everywhere.
Some examples:
- There are private CCTV cameras all over the estate where I live (which is admittedly a fairly high-end riverside apartment block), both inside the hallways and observing the roads and car park.
- There are cameras (for traffic monitoring purposes) at the nearby busy roundabout junction just down from me.
- There are red light cameras, box junction cameras (do you have box junctions in North America?) and speed cameras on many major roads, roundabouts and intersections.
- There are usually 6-8 cameras watching each platform of a train or tube station, and cameras in every carriage on the trains themselves. There are also normally 2-6 cameras on most busses operated by Transport for London, i.e. London's red busses.
- There are also cameras that record other vehicles in bus lanes on the back and front of busses.
- On some high streets, the council operates CCTV cameras for crime prevention, these are typically on the top of lamp posts and 'rove' back and forth under human control. Sometimes they snap pictures of car registrations if you park on yellow lines or otherwise where you oughtn't.
- There's private CCTV in a good proportion of shops, certainly all department stores, supermarkets and shopping arcades (malls).
So I guess you might ask, am I bothered by this, or are other British people?
I think the answer is 'no'. We're a pretty apathetic bunch, generally, and a lot of British people take the attitude that these sort of things aren't a problem if you're not doing anything wrong. That's not to say this is a universal view - there are some people who are bothered by the omnipresence of CCTV in this country, but there's no organised resistance or objections by any of the major political parties.
Much like our other databases and the ID cards debate, there are a vocal minority of people with serious objections, but I think the vast majority of the population don't care, because they're not criminals, and so they don't think it'll be something that affects them.
So yes, you've made up your mind. That's what I thought.
