Big Brother is Watching You (But the Lazy Bugger Isn't Paying Attention)

The average Londoner is seen on a closed-circuit TV camera about 300 times a day, and there are about 4 million cameras in England alone, making it one of the most supervised countries in the world.

Each year, the ratio of cameras in London to crimes-solved-by-use-of cameras is about 10,000:1. In other words, for every 10,000 cameras you put up, you get 1 conviction based on film captured by a camera.

Also, the cameras are expensive: In London, where an estimated £200 million so far has been spent on the cameras. This suggests that each crime has cost £20,000 to detect.

Interesting stuff. Read the whole thing.

Incidentally, the best line in the whole piece (for my money, anyway) is at the bottom:

"The Home Office defended the use of CCTV, with a spokesman saying cameras could "help communities feel safer"."

Note the difference between "feeling safe" and actually "being safe." Feeling safe only requires that you ignore reality, I guess.

I'm also pretty sure that someone will soon suggest that the (4 million) cameras are not catching bad guys because there aren't enough of them, or they aren't staffed by enough snoops, and we'll soon hear a version of the Do-It-Again-Only-Harder argument so beloved by gun control advocates.