UK Addiction To SURVEILLANCE: The BIG BROTHER Society. CCTV, Freedoms & Privacy ?
There are up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in Britain, according to a report by The British Security Industry Association.
It's thought Britain could have more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world.
Evidence
Footage  from CCTV cameras is often used by police as evidence to convict  criminals, and some people believe this helps prevent crime.
Much  of Britain has been fixated on this number ever since (a figure derived  by counting those cameras present on Putney High Street in London and  extrapolating upwards for a 'guesstimate'). We've been consistently  bombarded with hypotheses on the supposed rise of the "Surveillance  State" and George Orwell's Big Brother coming to life ever since.
The  BSIA's 51-page document focuses on the number of properties in the UK,  floor area, and "alternative appropriate estimates". It accounts for the  number of CCTV cameras located in (for example) offices, factories,  warehouses, schools, department stores, car parks, and railway stations,  and those deployed for "security surveillance, related monitoring and  safety aspects". Low-, medium-, and upper-level camera figures for the  UK are tabulated.
According to the BSIA, camera numbers in the  private sector could be outweighing those operated by the police and  local authorities by a factor of somewhere around 70:1.
So the  vast majority of cameras are privately owned and operated -- very much  contrary to popular opinion that we're all living in a "Surveillance  State".
Parliament has made a pleasing start to regulating CCTV  and its operation, not least through the auspices of the Security  Industry Authority and its own Public Space Surveillance licensing  regime.
Is it, though, addressing what many commentators believe  to be the central challenge -- the extent of camera proliferation in the  private sector and the need for it to be closely monitored?
As  stated, evidence to help solve cases of criminality unearthed by the  police service often comes from cameras stationed in the private sector,  but how many times have we heard about "less than perfect"  installations or accusations of generally poor CCTV management? Are CCTV  systems genuinely "fit for purpose" (i.e. are they fully operational  and recording properly)? Do surveillance solutions meet the needs of  their end-users (around image quality, for example)?
Increasingly,  more companies wish their premises to be protected by CCTV, but, at the  very same time, more non-specialist installers are entering the fray  and itching to grab a slice of the commercial action.
Such  regulation will ensure the private sector provides the highest-quality  video evidence possible for use by the police and the courts. A  situation that's very much for the public good.
A new camera  technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of camera footage  instantly, and find any face which has EVER walked past it.
ts makers boast that it can scan 36 million faces per second.
The  technology raises the spectre of governments -- or other organisations  -- being able to 'find' anyone instantly simply using a passport photo  or a Facebook profile.
The 'trick' is that the camera 'processes'  faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are  recorded and stored instantly. 
Faces are stored as a searchable 'biometric' record, storing the unique
When  the police -- or anyone else -- want to search for a particular  individual, they're searching through a gallery of pre-indexed faces,  rather than a messy library of footage.
It is so intrusive that  Britain may be in breach of human rights laws, he warned, and most  people are ignorant of how sophisticated technology has become.
technological  ability to use millions of images we capture -- there will be a huge  public backlash. It is the Big Brother scenario playing out large. It's  the ability to pick out your face in a crowd from a camera which is  probably half a mile away."
Imagine if Google or Facebook decided  to install their own CCTV cameras everywhere, gathering data about our  movements, recording our lives and joining up every camera in the land  in one giant control room. It's Orwellian surveillance with fluffier  branding. And this isn't just video surveillance --