Watching Them, Watching Us

UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

The United Kingdom leads the world in the deployment of Closed Circuit Tele Vision camera technology. However, we seem to have no coherent, legally enforceable rules or regulations which ensure that Public CCTV schemes are run properly.

This website aims to open up a debate about the extent to which powerful technologies such as linked CCTV camera systems, neural network facial recognition , car number plate recognition, multimedia image databases etc. are being applied in the UK.

We feel that there are substantial civil liberties problems that are not being addressed by the existing CCTV schemes. All the recent published evidence seems to question the cost effectiveness of Public CCTV surveillance sytems in combatting crime. CCTV Surveillance has spread from the streets to indoors at work, or virtually any place we go for entertainment - why has there been no resulting reduction in crime ?

It comes as a shock to most people when it is explained to them that there is no law of privacy in the UK. Now that the UK has finally signed the European Convention on Human Rights, it is time that there such a Privacy Law is enacted, for eveyone, not just for famous people.


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Copyright © 1998 [Watching Them, Watching Us]. All rights reserved.
Revised: June 12th, 1998