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Comment by briandon | Hacker News Reader

Fair point w/re to most of the UK's omnipresent CCTV cameras being privately owned:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362493/One-CCTV-cam...

  The research involved police community support officers 
  counting every camera in Cheshire and extrapolating the 
  results nationwide to provide a reliable estimate of the 
  level of CCTV surveillance in the UK.
  
  Officers counted 12,333 cameras in the area, according to 
  a study published in CCTV Image magazine, the majority of 
  which were inside premises, rather than facing public 
  street.
  
  The research also found that most CCTV cameras in the UK 
  are likely to be privately owned, with only 504 of 
  Cheshire’s cameras run by public bodies.

In a county of about a million people, only 500+ of the 12,000+ cameras were owned by a government body.

Of course, one would think that it wouldn't be very difficult for the authorities to obtain footage from privately-owned cameras.

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It might be important to note that government owned cameras are by definition pointing to public property (where everybody passes), whereas private cameras should be targeted at some private property (enforced by law, at least in some countries). If this distinction remains true in practice, it would at least seem that privately owned cameras are "morally" a bit more in their right. (You submit to the house rules when visiting vs being filmed when doing something that is nobody's business, like just passing by)

Regarding the "processing" argument in the original article. It seems to me that government owned cameras are a bigger concern, if we assume that they can provide a general combined view (while privately owned cameras provide a lot of isolated views).

EDIT: spelling

The fact that the majority of camera is privately owned is not relevant. The question remains: "Is 500 cameras too many, too little or just about right, for a county of 1 million?". I have no idea, but I don't see why the ratio public/private is important.

The public/private aspect is important because the question changed from "Is 12,000 cameras …" to "Is 500 cameras …"

The article cited never asked "Is 12,000 ...". They say "Look cameras are not that bad since most are on premise and are privately owned and operated." I find that this comparison is dishonest and is not relevant.

edit: changed "you cite" to "cited", The response is not to the OP.

> "Of course, one would think that it wouldn't be very difficult for the authorities to obtain footage from privately-owned cameras."

As an individual I've easily been able to obtain stills from privately operated security cameras, once when I left something in a taxi, and needed to track down the operator (got that within minutes), and another in relation to a no-fault car accident (feckin' motor-cycle courier!), in both cases just by tracking down the owner of a public facing camera and asking nicely. On that basis, I doubt the police would have any more difficulty doing the same, but there is still a significant difference between this and the "police state" image this article portrays.

Yeah, for it to extend to "police state", you'd need to have cops manning the cameras at all times, ordering people around via a mounted speaker.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6524495.stm

They're also looking at indoor cameras on private property, which were the majority of cameras in the final number.

It's also "economical with the actualité" to put it in parliamentary langauge

A number plate recognition camera logging everyone entering London is owned and operated by the contractor providing the billing for the congestion charge - so it's not a government camera. But you don't think the government could have access to the data?

It's like saying there is no government cell phone monitoring - the monitoring is all done by commercial cell phone companies.

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