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Comment by sancha_ | Hacker News Reader

Yes, per capita, e.g. this article says there is one camera for every eleven people in the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveilla...

But most of those cameras are privately held for things like security in small shops or around homes or garages. They aren't connected to some centralised Big Brother database. In fact, the authorities probably don't even know most of them are there until, say, the police turn up to investigate a theft from a shop and the owner offers relevant CCTV footage to help the investigation.

There are also a lot of state-controlled cameras monitoring places like public spaces in big cities, and we do have things like ANPR cameras monitoring lots of our roads, and there are genuine and legitimate privacy concerns about these technologies and how they are used. But please let's keep any discussion of them proportionate and based on the facts not the FUD. There are greater threats to privacy in this country than cameras that show you where the queues on the roads are before you set off to your London job in the morning.

That's not actually true. A large amount of those CCTV cameras are in fact managed and monitored by 2 or 3 big security companies, making them much more accessible to the government.

[citation needed]

Yes, but that article is talking about both public and privately owned cameras. You said public cameras. Unless you want the government to ban private CCTV the large number of private CCTV cameras in the UK isn't really much to do with the government.

Also that statistic on its own doesn't show that the UK has the highest rate unless you have number from other (similarly wealthy) countries to compare it to.

CCTV cameras are mandated with new licences for pubs, bars and clubs. The police often force you to have X cameras or your licence will be denied. So the private/public distinction is fairly meaningless.

In my home city, Nottingham, because it's very hard to get a new licence at the moment, the police have such clout I heard of ridiculous scenarios where they started asking for 7 or 8 cameras in small restaurants in quiet areas of town.

It's still not meaningless because the ease of access for the government is drastically different. E.g. having council employed (sometimes) camera operators watching live feeds vs. some owner that is unmotivated to deal with them unless something happens that they need evidence of.

Yeah, a lot of these places are still old school. They might have a DVD recorder in the back office that rewrites after x hours/days. So its not "we mandate them to buy the hardware and that we have access to at all times". Obviously places can do that with firms like ADT, just saying it isn't a clear cut government ploy.

To be fair, as an ex-Nottingham resident, putting a CCTV camera up made life better for us. There were crack whores jacking up on heroin on my doorstep because there was a light there. Eventually I took the bulb out.

Mapperley Road for reference. There were even crack whores on Google Street View on there for a couple of years...

Mapperley Road leading to St. Anns, one of the worst council estates in England?

So not that surprising. Also Mapperley Road leads onto Forest Road East, which at least used to be a notorious red light district and always have really skanky prostitutes hanging out on it.

You lived on a really bad street.

I lived 10 minutes down the road from you about 8 years ago, Zulla road. That area was really nice, although they'd recently finished a big campaign to stop robberies in the area due to, you guessed it, St Ann's residents.

I really don't think one extreme problem area should be compared to a restaurant in Hockley where all the hipsters hang out.

Indeed. This was in in early 00's for ref.

I think it should be compared. Hockley is right at the bottom of "Wells Road" at the arse end of St Annes and was a notorious shit hole in the early 00s.

Genuinely surprised they managed to clean the place up.

Still glad I escaped.

it's sad that the solution for this society problems are cameras in your place. that you are thankfull for this total surveillance is fucked up. I hope UK leaves EU soon. it is a rotten place and we should prevent it's dystopian development to spread.

The EU have nothing to do with that.

Hell, I don't think even the foaming-at-the-mouth UKIP eurosceptics try to claim the UK turned into a surveillance society due to the EU. Neither did the EU ask the UK to lead the global surveillance efforts in Europe through GCHQ. Not to mention the fact that it is David Cameron himself who is trying to get out of the EU's human rights framework.

I may be wrong, but I read GP as being a citizen of some other EU country wanting rid of the UK. And I can hardly blame them, even as a UK citizen. Our government shows an utter disdain for Europe, mostly so that they can use it as yet another bogeyman to distract people from everything they're doing.

Oh, indeed, this makes sense. Well, if that makes you feel better, most EU countries seem to be on the same nefarious track when it comes to global surveillance, and I don't see this kind of cooperation change in the future, whether or not there is a Brexit.

That's not a solution, it just moves the problem along.

Actually, if you define the solution narrowly as "undesirables on my doorstep" I suppose it is a solution; but since the wider problem is resolved by reducing the pool of undesirables for any doorsteps, only in the very narrowest sense.

The EU is the only thing stopping the UK surveillance state becoming even worse.

We are indeed a rotten place but its not because of CCTV and surveillance. This is just a symptom of deeper problems in society.

The distinction is certainly not meaningless, because they can't be used for surveillance - the footage of private cameras is only useful after the fact.

How secure are private cameras? I assume that many are IP enabled these days. And I assume that they have default passwords...

Answer. Totally insecure. If GCHQ wanted to they could grab vast amounts of extra video feed.

They could? More like they are.

Surely someone would notice the network traffic if they were (like the bill payers - small businesses tend to be on top of their bills).

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