CCTV CAMERAS

I hired a car this time I went to the U.K. Which meant I had plenty of opportunity to observe at first hand how many CCTV ("Closed Circuit Television") cameras there are in the country.

They are everywhere. In car parks, shopping malls, individual stores, city centre streets, and (most relevant for motorists) on many, if not most, main roads. You are for ever moving from one speed-controlled area to another, accompanied by a warning that speed cameras will be waiting for you at some point (which they duly are).

This plethora of cameras, and the fines that accompany breaches of the rules, almost certainly reduce speed and the number of deaths on the road (though by how much and at what cost is not very clear). If true, then that is a good thing. However, the move to a "Big Brother" society is not, in my view. Britain has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV cameras in the world. A year ago, it was calculated that there were more than 4.2 million cameras in the country, more than the whole of control-obsessed China, and one for every 14 people; the total today will be higher. On an average day, an average person is estimated to be caught on camera at least 300 times. To what end? Proponents will point to examples such as the perpetrators of the London Tube bombings in 2005, who were caught on camera at a suburban railway station on their way to the capital. But there is a difference in my view between large public spaces such as railway stations, and individual shop fronts.

There will always be a tension between the need for security and the desire for freedom (and its associate, privacy). But we should be careful in allowing an erosion of the latter in the name of the former. After all, CCTV cameras did not stop the London bombers from carrying out their design, they merely speeded up the process of identification; by which time, it was too late.

Walter Blotscher