Big brother's blindspots

I don’t know which worries me more. The knowledge that my every movement outdoors is tracked by hundreds of CCTV cameras, most of which I’m entirely oblivious to. Or the latest revelation that the camera might well not have been working, that even if it had its images were of such poor quality as to be useless for identification, and that probably nobody was looking at the footage anyway.

There have been a number of reports into the efficacy of cctv cameras over the past decade. They have all reached broadly the same conclusion. They aren’t very effective. Two years ago, figures obtained by London Assembly Liberal Democrats under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that there was no difference in the crime clear-up rates between boroughs which had hundreds of CCTV cameras, and those with only a handful. In fact, the CCTV-heavy councils came off slightly worse.

Now another report – also released under the FoI Act – reveals that the police are less than convinced by CCTV’s crime-fighting record. The internal report’s writer, DCI Nick Melville, who runs the Met’s visual images identifications and detections office, concluded that for every 1,000 security cameras in London (and there’s more than one million in total) less than one crime is solved a year.

Both central and local government have justified the investment in security cameras (roughly £5bn nationwide with £2bn in London alone) on the grounds that people want them, that its presence makes them feel safer in public places. Never mind that their reputation exceeded their record. They were popular.

But the Met’s report suggests the magic is wearing off. Public confidence has been dented by people’s experiences of the crime scene’s cameras not working, or the footage lost. It also notes a significant rise in complaints that the police weren’t scrutinising the evidence thoroughly.

Do CCTV cameras invade our privacy or make us safer? The evidence seems to be mounting that they do neither. But they cost quite a lot.