Britain’s the most watched country in the world, with more CCTV cameras per person than anyone else. That CCTV is hopelessly inadequately regulated - you don’t even have to have any qualifications or background checks to be an operator, and there are few restrictions on who gets access to images and what they can do with them.

So it’s rather alarming, to say the least, to read that 19 out of 20 CCTV systems don’t even comply with the piffling rules there are in place.

Personally, I can’t wait until the ID cards programme gives the government a high-resolution photograph of each and every one of us, facial recognition technology improves so people can be picked out from moving CCTV, and cameras are installed at eye-height in lamp posts to get a clear shot.

Sound like a fantasy?

Tell that to the Information Commissioner, who suggested such systems could be routine by 2016 in his report on the Surveillance Society:

34.3. CCTV is also less noticeable. Smaller cameras are embedded in lampposts at eyelevel and walls, which allow the more efficient operation of the now universal facial
recognition systems. Morphing software which combines images from multiple
cameras to build a 3-dimensional picture is also being pioneered, although
campaigners and lawyers argue it is inaccurate and not a ‘real’ image.

34.4. It is not just the cameras themselves. Almost universal wireless networking
allows the cameras to be freed from bulky boxes and wires. In addition, the cameras
are linked to intelligent street lighting which provides ‘ideal’ lighting conditions for
recognition software, and also movement activated floodlighting and extra cameras
in the case of crowd ‘clumping’ or unusual movement.