In the United kingdom, there are approximately 21 million CCTV surveillance cameras in operation. To better understand who is watching and with what technology they’re watching with, Comparitech filed Freedom of Information requests with 48 police councils and 380 UK councils in order to map the country’s surveillance. Cameras are not the only technology the research considered, as the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) was also measured. 

The report discovered that the most surveilled council area, based on number of cameras per 1,000 people, is North Ayrshire Council. In this council, there are 1,849 cameras per 134,010 people, which equates to 13.2 cameras per 1,000. 

The research found little correlation between the amount of public CCTV cameras and the reduction in crime. 

“The report highlights a clear imbalance in the levels of surveillance across the UK,” says Rebecca Moody, Head of Data Research at Comparitech. “While some councils have opted for widespread camera systems, others have steered clear — and, as we found, this has little (if anything) to do with crime rates.” 

Key findings from the report include:

• Seven out of 20 of the world’s most surveilled locations reside in Britain (when excluding China) 
• The Metropolitan Police has most cameras at 31,077
• The highest ratio of cameras per 1,000 people goes to Scottish councils (3.6)

When excluding China, the seven councils that rank in the globe’s top 20 most surveilled cities include North Ayrshire, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Shetland Islands, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth City, and Clackmannanshire. 

“From a privacy perspective, what’s also concerning is the use of real-time systems, such as ANPR and facial recognition,” Moody asserts. “While they’re in place for certain tasks, e.g. to monitor cars for traffic violations and to seek out persons of interest, they ultimately subject all citizens to mass surveillance. And, as we note, there’s also a worrying risk of ‘mission creep’, whereby these systems are promoted as helping X but, after a while, they’re also used to combat Y, and then Z, until, before we know it, their use is extensive and widespread. Essentially, once a system is installed under the guise of combating a certain crime, it can be easily rolled out into other areas. For example, ANPR was introduced as an anti-terrorism tool but has quickly become a key system to help with traffic enforcement.”