Source: Surveillance Camera Statistics: Which City has the Most CCTV Cameras?

Surveillance cameras proliferance does not equate to less crime, so says this report.

But what made me go looking at these statistics?  The Sunday Mirror on the 2nd Aug 2020 has a smallish report by Matthew Davies stuck on the bottom of page 14 – ’19 billion cars a year caught on cops’TV’.  This report stated that ‘cops’ are snapping motorists with road cameras at a record rate of 610 per second, that the number of cars pictured by a network of CCTV devices annually has doubled in five years, up to 19.2 billion in 2019-2020 from 11 billion in 2014-15.

But are all these drivers breaking the law?  It would seem not, and privacy watchdogs have warned the technology could be used to film innocent people who are not breaking any laws.

This is nothing new or startling, but what is startling is the volume of pictures being taken, and that there is very little oversight into how long these pictures are kept, who is taking them, and if they even should be taken!

An interesting fact that came out during my research is that the vast majority of CCTV cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses.  According to the 2011 Freedom of Information Act request, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK. (Wikipedia -Mass Surveillance In The UK).

Further reading:

• Surveillance camera statistics: which cities have the most CCTV cameras?
• Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
• WHERE ARE YOU BEING WATCHED MOST?
• A UK map of CCTV cameras: Towns and cities by surveillance camera concentration
• How many CCTV Cameras are there in the UK?
• The Most Surveilled Cities in Europe
• CCTV Britain: Why are we the most spied on country in the world?
• A Review of the international evidence of the effectiveness of the use of CCTV in care home settings