More and more CCTV cameras are popping up all around the world in any place from outside banking institutions to parks.
Photo from Anders Sandberg’s flickr
Everywhere you go, you seem to be watched at some point or another – in fact in the U.K you can be watched up to 300 times a day.
Is the Big Brother fantasy from the book “Nineteen Eighty Four” becoming a reality? Slowly but surely is probably the answer.
Especially so in the United Kingdom, which is the most watched nation on earth – with a reported one camera to every 14 people as of 2008 (a total of 4,2 million). Other nations around the world are extending their use of CCTV.
On the one hand – if anything does ever happen to you in the street, it will all be caught on camera and thus creates the idea of safety through a sense of security.
The argument is why do we need so many cameras in our cities and towns?
Just imagine, for one moment, we lived in a Big Brother world – where every action was watched and monitored. Would you be happy with this lifestyle?
Surely it’s an invasion of privacy to have so much CCTV surveillance following us wherever we go, as well as a violation of data protection.
It creates the feeling that we are being watched for no real reason other than so people higher up can keep an eye on us.
According to a YouGov poll, the majority of people are in full support of CCTV cameras – thinking they will keep us secure and safe. But would you trade an ounce of liberty for a lifetime of high level security?
The worrying factor is that more CCTV cameras will appear, as if there aren’t enough already. More so worrying is that the next step is for these cameras to feature high-powered microphones to monitor your conversations.
Whilst I can not deny that crime solving could be made a lot easier, I am in the majority when I say I have never broken the law and had no intention of doing so. I feel like my privacy is being severely invaded.
Do you think CCTV is a good thing or do you feel your privacy is being severely invaded?
Moment Matters 
Yes, I have been reading many an article, which I’ve posted on my website, about these cameras. I have a video on them too.
‘Wake Up and Smell the Unrest’: Experts Say ‘TrapWire’ Surveillance Overhyped But It Raises Important Civil Liberties Issues
Lancaster, CA to Watched By Permanent Eye in the Sky
I think we have reached the tipping point. When you consider that the authorities can use facial recognition software and hook up all the video together they will know who you are, where you are, what you are doing and who you are doing it with. And now they want “Smart Meters” on our household electric boxes? They will know when you shower and wash clothes and use the microwave and run the vacuum and how you heat your home. They already are telling us where we can smoke, how much salt and fat the restaurants use, how large the soft drink containers can be and on and on. Now they will start telling us we can not keep our homes warmer than 72 degrees F. or in summer cooler than 75 F. No follks, we are right on the brink already. (Don’t leave your cell phones with the cameras open at night – – – you never know what they may send somewhere!)
Security at the price of freedom? Too high a price for me…
There on the highways and by-ways . Don’t forget the eye in the sky . Good post , I’ll see ya later .
Before I left Northern Ireland I counted one morning how many cameras I passed through on my way to work; from door to door about 30 miles. It was 67. I thought that was amazing.
Nice post. Now there are cameras watching cameras watching cameras and so 😉
The State’s scared and so turns in on the people. It’s best to ignore it as far as possible or it will use the fear it tries to project to stop us expressing ourselves and so building awareness and raising consciousness.
Excellent post.
I so agree with you.
Great post! Too many eyes for me to feel safe. I want my freedom back. 🙂
This CCTV is a worldwide issue……our National Security Minister just announced that a comprehensive system of cameras will be strategically placed throughout Nassau by the end of the year…….I believe there are positives and negatives but security at the price of freedom is costly in many ways.
I think we’re pretty much there… it’s amazing how things have changed in just the past 20 years. I mean, think of how things were when we were kids to how they are now. Stunning, really.
I just read a book called Black List and while it’s fiction, it addresses this very topic in a realistic way. Scarey to say the least.
I believe it is over the top to have so many cameras at the expense of privacy. It is not that we may do something wrong as much as it is no person’s business what we do unless we infringe on other people’s rights…then we can not complain if our privacy is compromised. For those who fail to respect others, the rest of us pay the price in the name of security. Unfortunately in a world that fosters “me first”, consideration for others is not on many individual’s radar screen and individual desires dictated by personal need rather than the common good often drives the behaviors that compromise security. Even if we do not plan to break laws, a feeling of being watched does exist and implies a lack of trust in our judgement and one ever knows how anything can be used against us in the future…that is the sad and interesting thing about it all. Things often get taken out of context…
Invasion of privacy, absolutely. At the same time on some level, at least for me, I have finite energy and spending it focused giving into the fear and mistrust I already experience is already too high a price. The natural world must be protected so that we have places to visit to calm and restore our brilliant selves. Peace to you and thanks for another great post.
Yes, it seems in the name of “security” we seem to lose a little more freedom each day.
Criminologically speaking CCTV very rarely works, there are much more effective means of crime prevention, the only clear advantage of CCTV is one which you have already touched on, the false sense of security that they provide, this makes it seem like the government are doing something about the crime and thus they build more and more.
Another danger of CCTV is that of ‘crime displacement’ meaning that crimes that would have otherwise being committed where the cameras are now placed are now just committed elsewhere i.e. rather than solving the problem it simply moves the problem somewhere else.
Saying all of this though I am sure people would kick up an equal fuss should all CCTV cameras would be magically removed from the world. I guess we cant win either way.
I remember when I lived in the UK being blown away by the amount of CCTV cameras. At home in Canada there is very little surveillance in comparison. For myself, cameras don’t make me feel safer – just guiltier (of things I’m note even guilty of!)
Have you seen the new TV series in the UK called ‘Person of Interest’? The guy has invented pretty much all the things your commentators have spoken of – voice recognition, pattern recognition etc. It’ll all be here eventually.
I have posted a response to your article here.
The idea that cameras all around. Are to “protect us”? Is laughable, to me. How long it takes other, simpler methods to be introduced for our “protection”; to then get dragged out for decades.
Along with CCTV. Is street lighting necessary? Consider the expense to the public? It is one, that enriches industrialists. There may be a few instances where necessary? But in general the lighting that the public pays for. Is never even considered, before cutting out, over social programs; etc.
Yet we are all lit up, like a proverbial christmas tree. With overhead surveillance and lighting, mainly unnecessary?
If really needed. Let’s not be charging the tax-payer. For surveillance cameras, or how the planet is lit up. With those really insidious lights.As in his other books, George Orwell pointed out how society is run.
“Big Brother”, is not “inevitable, Mr. Smith”. We need to true to ourselves, in the rejection of this Fascism.
Good article. Dominic Raab’s “The assault on liberty” looks at this issue in detail, well worth a read. I’m sure he has statistics in there which highlight the low number of convictions that are actually achieved using CCTV.
We are in a Big Brother world. All the shops and stores have surviellance cameras for their security, and extending that to the streets was an easy step. In the US when Bush’s congress passed the Patriot Act, which was anything but, allowed the US government to access to your computer history, library borrowing habits, and gave them more freedom with the use of wire taps. How will it end? I don’t know, I never finished 1981, but I hope the people won. So far in the US anyway, we are happy to give away our hard fought freedoms, and concurrently support our military which provides that freedom to other countries.
No I would not trade my privacy for security. I live in a very small town with very few cameras, Wal Mart has the most on the edge of town. It always makes me uncomfortable when I travel and notice the cameras around, it’s not the way I thought life was supposed to be.
Hopefully they will protect me more then … harm me. Have nothing to hide – so I don’t mind them at all. What privacy do we have outside our own home ???? There can be anyone taking photos of us and our kids … Out in the public we are public! If they install a camera in my home .. that’s a completely different matter. It has help to prevent and solve crimes, so we need them – so I give them a BIG FAT – Yes.
In the U.S. there is a show called Law and Order, Special Victims Unit. It wasn’t until I started watching that show that I learned how many ways the powers that be can track your every move. I couldn’t even pay my last 2 years of college with cash, the way I use to. It was mandatory to use a credit card or have money pulled from a bank. It’s really frightening and infuriating. Have you ever read the book, The Traveler? It’s amazing and talks about this very thing at length.
In Nigeria here, we wish we could have all those camera pointing at every corner. criminals often get away with open crimes because of lack of evidence and cameras would help in that regard.
But again, the title scared me. Cant help feeling naked if a camera is always pointing at me
Yes, that is where the initiative came from—criminals don’t like street lights and cameras—it creates witnesses, identification, and evidence. It is only now, when all the street thugs have been driven away, that people complain about this surveillance.
I agree with you, totally.
Committing crimes, you say? I have no problem with property owners using either lights or cameras for their security.
My problem is with the tax-payer funding; of the police and public CCTV. Fifty years ago, where I was raised [one of the largest cities in the world]. You needed neither. Crime free and dark at night. Dark so you can see the stars and be reminded to look up and see how precious life is.
The suburban lighting running for miles; with it’s ghostly luminescence as you draw nearer to the city, after dark.
Is an intrusion on the planet and our souls. I have good lights on my vehicle, as do others. In the rural areas we use them, why not in urban? Because, the industrialists are making millions of dollars off of an infrastructure. One they constantly seek more tax-dollars, for their expansion.
Now there’s highway robbery, for you?
I think you should come and see how criminals get away with heinous crimes on the streets and get away with it here. Lynchings, rape etc…its sad.
Well, fifty years ago—come on. We also didn’t have random madmen walking into malls and schools and wherever. And just thirty years ago, NYC was brighter than it is today—they stopped leaving the lights on all night when green-living attitudes pointed out that they were spending thousands of dollars on lights in an office building when the thing was empty for twelve hours.
No one who wants to commune with the stars at night should live near a city, anyhow. And government (and this is local government—not some sort of Fed scam) started spending money on lights and cameras when the statisticians proved that both were deterrents to crime—and cost less than the police patrols to suppress nighttime muggings, burglaries, and lots more violence.
Thank you for your kind invitation. I think I will decline. As I also declined the invitation to look after millions of dollars; from one of your government ministers.
I can see you’re beset by crime, corruption and moral decay. I really do not think that your answers lie in utilizing CCTV cameras. Or for that matter public street lights. Which just make the crimes easier to commit. The lack of moral turpitude, lies in education.
The wars that your country and the sort of religious struggle that Nigeria is under. To me Is appalling. It appears to need solutions beyond street lights and CCTV.
I am so often reminded of the philosopher, Plato’s quote. From 460BCE. “Good people do not need laws telling them what to do and the bad, will just find ways around them”. Cheers!
i do not think i can refute you points here but…some people need watching
Kukogho, you should know that the USA has a plethora of corrupt officials, probably more than your country. And the fact is, they steal in the light of day. It is the desperation of poverty and ignorance that compels street crime at night—here, as in your country. We have only succeeded in protecting our middle classes and our wealthy. Both of us have a long way to go before we reach utopia…
Hirundine608, you have a very facile way of expressing contempt for other’s cultures and opinions. Such cold crassness may make you feel good about yourself, but it doesn’t provide the rest of us with any kind of value or entertainment. Didn’t your mother ever tell you what to do when you have nothing nice to say?
Ah well, yes. I see.
The original blog, about increased surveillance in society. Whether it makes one feel safer?
Becomes somewhat chilling, when reading your attachment. If those are the people looking after society and it’s surveillance?
I’m just waiting for the first lawsuit against weapons maker. Seeking for damages, to society. Better yet? The Nobel, or other makers of smokeless gunpowder. Rubbing their hands together as each bullet goes off with their patented product; causing trouble and strife to society.
Then they have the nerve, to hand out large sums of money in the form of “Peace” prize. Yasser Arafat fer chrissake?
Life…. I admire your vast knowledge and concern.
but for someone like me who lives and works in the capital, and sees/experience first hand, i am afraid for the future.
people dont want to think…and when they think, they dont want to act.
of a fact, surveillance makes the world safer in one way and even more dangerous in another as the powers will be able to monitor and deal with real and imagined enemies with impunity.
Like a lot of electronic gizmos, they an be easily held hostage. In the hands of the watchers.
So then, who’s watching the watchers?
Trouble and strife, is what this world is about. Economic slavery, for most. People are tied to their vanities and habits.
What you have Mr. Kukogho Samson, is a lot; of what others want. Which is true, for us both? I imagine? I just see my country and our globe as being systematically robbed. Through burdensome taxation. A taxation, disproportionate to status. As evidenced by people like Mitt Romney.
Democracy is no more than mob rule by 51% of the population, while the other 49% are disenfranchised. Yet this is the standard by which we hold “dear?
Hmmm. thoughful. I also get worried everyday about the state of the world, especially how we are destroying ourselves by destroying the earth. It all boils down to one thing: corruption and loss of morals. We have lost connection with the inner being and we have unevolved back to the age of cannibalism(economic and otherwise)
Homo erectus would be ashamed of us.
“Homo erectus would be ashamed of us”. Quite so, Mr. Samson! Quite so!
That Neanderthal DNA is present in most Homo Sapiens. Perhaps, it is the culprit; in all this?
Personally, I’m a vegetarian. The idea of eating flesh of any warm-blooded creature, is repulsive to me. ….. Cheers!
Thank you Sir. It has been nice interacting with you. I wish to read more from you. Sure.
XperDunn – Interesting. Never thought of it that way.
That there are corrupt officials in the US is no doubt but corruption is not even our problem…we can hardly do anything about that here.
The main problems are the petty street crimes that these cameras can stop. In Nigeria, hit and run drivers kill daily. Muggers rain supreme and so do ‘kidnap and rob’ criminals …then there are 419ers…
Dear Kukogho,
It sounds from your description of mayhem. That lawlessness, is endemic. If the solution is as you say? I cannot guess how you will stop this, more than now, with lights and CCTV? Good luck with that!
I’m just saying that it is within interests of the people charging for the power and the surveillance. To find ways of increasing the need for such. If it were a well ordered society? They would be out of a job.
In London, England in the fifties. Street lights went out at 9.30 pm – 10p.m. BTW those lamps were gas-powered. After that every one carried a lantern and lights on bikes and cars. To be fair? Theere was always a police presence with small cop-shops in every community. There were some areas around Billingsgate, etc. That were all nighters. Mostly, it was then dark until sun-up. Nope, I’m not proposing a return to a dark age. Just the idea that all of them could have been solar-powered, for over well over 20 years. Yet constantly we see them tied into the grid and then wonder why? There are black-outs. When budgets discussed for social good are cut back. The idea of cutting back street lighting, never even gets considered? One only has to look at a Google App. Earth at night, to see how much is burning. to the cost of tax-payers. How much and where!
Problem here is the police are the ones giving out the guns to the criminals…Pls read this.
We ARE headed towards more of a BIg Brother world. What was possibly intended for good (I’m assuming) will most likely be used for evil, and most people won’t be the wiser until it’s too late because, as a society, we’ll have been lulled into complacency.