I remember being taken aback by the amount of street CCTV cameras back in the early '00s. Coming from Canada for a visit that feeling of being observed nearly constantly was really uncomfortable and bizarre. For Brits it looked like a norm (or they didn't show it). Also the parallels with 1984 were uncanny, especially given that Orwell was English.
http://soerenkern.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/uk-met1...
I'm really glad the EU just completely banned predictive policing.
Almost nobody worries about these transport safety cameras because we don’t fear or tolerate overpolicing in the same way.
Of course there should be safety cameras on public transport!
And if a US tourist was on a night bus in London they too would be happy there were cameras. A nation of drivers has a very different calibration, I suspect.
In the end the CCTV doesn't actually prevent anything from happening ...
The question of whether it prevents things from happening is a question of statistics.
I suspect the data doesn't support your claim, and that certain categories of crime have indeed been deterred. But neither of us can know without that statistical analysis.
Yes, the tory government have been trying to stack the governance of the BBC with their own people, but it doesn’t always go the way they expect.
Australia wants that title!
Bunnings here also uses (used?) facial recognition technology.
Also concert venues and sporting events.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/bunnings-denies-reintrod...
I'd be willing to bet that supermarkets are next, if they aren't already.
The vast, vast majority of CCTV systems in the UK, that are part of this “culture”, are just store and private CCTV systems that police can get access to with a warrant, by going door to door. The same as in almost all western countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
There’s almost no police CCTV network, and there’s no reality to the fantasy element of police being able to see you wherever you go in the UK in real time (with the exception of a few crowded high crime areas where tourists get robbed, ironically, and a few high violence and terrorism risk areas, public transport facilities and live road traffic cameras).
There are some council-owned networks in high crime areas which are pretty contentious, and then there are these police facial recognition vans which are clearly offensive bullshit overreach.
In particular a lot of visitors misunderstand the prevalence of cameras pointed at our roads, which are not live feed cameras at all but speed-triggered safety cameras.
Basically it’s important to understand that the vast majority of cameras in the UK are people and businesses legally protecting their own shit, just like in the USA.
One key cultural difference is ANPR. In America the general perception is that privacy includes where you go in your car, because you treat it as a portable living room. There’s never been that presumption here. ANPR systems probably can track cars in metropolitan areas and on some motorways, but live traffic cameras are unusual in most of the country.
There is definitely a slightly less self-centred lean to the balance of individual rights compared to community safety compared to North America. But this is also part of why we don’t have to put up with anywhere near the same risk of violence or crime, even in areas that are significantly more densely populated.
We also have pretty good laws governing this stuff.
In short, Hot Fuzz ain’t real, and I think North Americans like to project this idea of a surveillance culture onto the UK without considering that they are likely under the exact same sorts of surveillance in the same sorts of places, without as many of the same legal protections.
(And with plainly discriminatory surveillance systems like Shotspotter to boot)
Do you think retailers in the USA and Canada are not using the systems described in the article? Because you would be wrong if you do.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12592563/wal...