Researchers Determine the 120 Most Surveilled (CCTV) Cities In the World (comparitech.com) 47
dryriver writes: Comparitech.com has published a report and spreadsheet laying out how many CCTV cameras are in operation in 120 different cities around the world, and data for the crime rates in these cities. The report notes "We found little correlation between the number of public CCTV cameras and crime or safety."
8 of the 10 most surveilled cities are in China, even though London and Atlana also make the cut, and the report says that — depending on what numbers you believe — China will have between 200 Million and 626 Million CCTV cameras, or possibly even more, in operation by 2020. That would be almost 1 CCTV camera per 2 citizens in the country, and the number could go up.
Outside of China, the top most-surveilled cities in the world are:
8 of the 10 most surveilled cities are in China, even though London and Atlana also make the cut, and the report says that — depending on what numbers you believe — China will have between 200 Million and 626 Million CCTV cameras, or possibly even more, in operation by 2020. That would be almost 1 CCTV camera per 2 citizens in the country, and the number could go up.
Outside of China, the top most-surveilled cities in the world are:
- London - 68.40 cameras per 1,000 people
- Atlanta - 15.56 cameras per 1,000 people
- Singapore - 15.25 cameras per 1,000 people
- Abu Dhabi - 13.77 cameras per 1,000 people
- Chicago - 13.06 cameras per 1,000 people
- Sydney - 12.35 cameras per 1,000 people
- Baghdad - 12.30 cameras per 1,000 people
- Dubai - 12.14 cameras per 1,000 people
- Moscow - 11.70 cameras per 1,000 people
- Berlin - 11.18 cameras per 1,000 people
- New Delhi - 9.62 cameras per 1,000 people
With 4,000 cameras, Washington D.C. is #29 on the list. Other American cities include San Francisco (#39 with 2,753 cameras), San Diego (#43 with 3,600 cameras), Boston (#47 with 1,552 cameras), and New York City (#58 with 11,000 cameras). And the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that at least for their city the total "is likely an undercount, considering that San Diego police officials said they recently installed surveillance sensors on about half of a planned 8,000 'smart' street lights."
Also on the list are Chennai India (#33 with 50,000 cameras), Auckland (#36 with 5,577 cameras), and Toronto (#44 with 14,955 cameras).
Spooky, but I suspect a misleading measure. (Score:2)
Cameras-per-square-meter would probably be more meaningful.
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Totally agree. A city might have less public camera's if law enforcement knows the majority of shops will have cameras everywhere and will comply to their requests for a copy. Shanghai though, nearly 3M cameras: impressive. Like city full of stereotypical Japanese tourists from the 80's ;)
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I immediately knew that it was public cameras only. Moscow has about 1 car per 3 citizens, and at least 30% of those have a dashboard camera. That's 100 cameras per 1000 citizens right there.
I do not know whether law enforcement can request the footage at will. What I do know is that quite a few cities of the US keep a few days worth of license plates that have crossed the major intersections. Combine that with dashboard cams, and when there is an accident, you could ask the owners of the cars in the n
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Brits love personal cameras because increasingly insurance likes to go 50/50 on any claims without video evidence.
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They say the camera add 10 pounds. (Score:3)
An Atlantan, I have 5 looking at me at any given moment.
Re: They say the camera add 10 pounds. (Score:2)
Hes probably a LEO posting anonymously (Score:1)
Re: They say the camera add 10 pounds. (Score:2)
Were I closer to those areas (yep, I've seen em), I'd be opposed. Actually, I _am_ opposed, but since I'm OTP, I have no standing on the issue.
OTOH, hard not to sympathize with people who just want others to stop rifling their cars and breaking in to their houses, to say nothing of violent crime.
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That's why southerner's are so much bigger.
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An Atlantan, I have 5 looking at me at any given moment.
Must be a hassle carrying around an extra 50 pounds.
Technology integration (Score:1)
"We have records of you walking from {innocuous Place X} to {innocuous Place Y}. In combination with your browsing history, as evaluated by a state-of-the-art, and therefore completely opaque to human analysis, neural net algorithm, you are therefore to be arrested."
I have no difficulty visualizing this occurring in China. I'm increasingly more concerned with regard to Western countries.
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China they give you a social score. It isn't just crimes, or at least serious crimes they are after. Do you go to a church? Do you jay walk? If so minus points for you. Next thing you know you can't get permission to move to a city, or get a job etc.
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Highest levels of surveillance found in the country with limited liberty
Did you not see Atlanta and Chicago on that list?
The US is also the only country where the police and one of the biggest private companies in the world are working together on surveillance, and doing their best to prevent you finding out about it:
Amazon's doorbell camera Ring is working with police – and controlling what they say [theguardian.com]
Don't go pretending your overlords are somehow nicer than the Chinese ones.
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1. What has Atlanta got to secure that makes it worth the extra investment?
2. Whats the problem with Atlanta that it needed all the extra CCTV?
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I'm guessing that there would have been a lot of Federal dollars around for securing the 96 games.
It's not just about quantity (Score:2)
It would be interesting to also quantify how the images are being used.
For example, to what degree are the camera's connected to facial recognition algorithms?
One city that has gone all-in on this is Mowcow, which would then put them higher on the list.
Re:It's not just about quantity (Score:4, Funny)
Mowcow an abattoir specializing in grass raised beef ;)
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I agree - London has a lot of cameras, but it's unclear who they're connected to. Whilst (say) the police might be able to get to look at the vast majority for specific events, they don't get to run AI on them 24x7 - they could only do that on a very small number of them. Likewise, say, the traffic people could only do any sort of wholesale analysis of their own cameras and not so easily for anyone elses. Whilst we're indeed headed down the rabbit hole, at the moment we have lots of separate government and
Shenzhen: Projected # cameras/1000 people: 1375.25 (Score:2)
# of CCTV Cameras: 1,929,600
# of People 12,128,721
# of CCTV Cameras per 1,000 People 159.09
Future Projections (or Addition of Private Cameras) 16,680,000
Future Projections of # of CCTV Cameras per 1,000 People (or Total Inc. Private Cameras) 1375.25
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Well, I have at least 19 cameras just for me in my house, three of which are explicitly security cameras and another 7 of which would be trivial to configure in that role.
Start adding private cameras into the mix and 1.3 per person feels remarkably low.
See, this is what the internet is now (Score:1)
The numbers should be double checked (Score:3)
"surveilled"? (Score:2)
"surveilled" - interesting new word. A back-form derived from surveillance, I assume?
I'd complain about the tortured things you Americans do to our language, but since we stole "Surveillance" from the French, we are not on high moral ground.
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Numbers are not the only metric (Score:1)
Moscow has all of the CCTV cameras wired into a tracking system with face recog. They also know how to use it. https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk] We also willingly help them develop and improve it - I loved the Faceapp heist. Getting a few tens of millions westerners to improve algos and Machine Learning that are obviously designed for police use. For free. Applause: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
We know what they are
CCTV has (Severely) Limited Value (Score:2)
Here are the issues with CCTV:-
1. They Are Only Useful After-the-Fact
As demonstrated by the London 7/7 bombings, the Boston Marathon and the Paris attacks, the single most useful thing CCTV offers is the ability to back-trace, after an incident, to try and identify the culprits. Contrary to popular arguments, CCTV does not act as an effective deterrent, because those determined to commit crime or cause harm will simply f
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Contrary to popular arguments, CCTV does not act as an effective deterrent
DO you have data for that claim?
There is a paradox. Before any CCTV (20, 50, 100 years ago, whatever) some areas had far more crime than others - orders of magnitude. Suppose in a high crime area like Bogville you had installed CCTV and the crime has dropped to half. The crime rate would still be higher than in many low crime areas without CCTV, say in Sylvania. But people could claim that CCTV is ineffective because crime rate with CCTV in Bogville is higher than without CCTV in Sylvania.
If compa
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1. The London attacks of 7/7. The perpetrators were caught on numerous CCTV cameras, both on the day of the attacks and during their reconnaissance visits.
2. The Boston Marathon attackers were caught on multiple cameras - both municipal and private - and went ahead with their plans regardless. They carried on with their plans, regardless.
3. The Paris attackers not only knew that the were being monitored, but they crafted their practices to blend in. After the back-traces that took place, the Fr
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When a CCTV is put up outside a small parade of shops in an outer London suburb, it is not for a policeman to watch a screen 24/7 for signs of a suicide bomber, so as then to rush out and build sandbags
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These are anecdotes, not data.
With the same reasoning, we can prove that locks are useless. Most burglaries happen when the door is locked, but that's just because very few people leave their door unlocked. You need to do proper analysis in order to evaluate the usefulness of something. For locks, insurance companies did their research. And that's why they are telling you to lock your door.
The effect of security cameras are difficult to judge.
- You know when security cameras are ineffective as a deterrent,
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While I support the usage of CCTV to solve crimes there will always be a dark side to it since you can't prevent people misusing them, corruption, etc.
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Funny how the cameras on the London tube were not working the day that the police murdered a guy, only days after the 7/7 attacks. Shame they didn't capture that time police officer Simon Harwood covered his face and badge number and murdered some random passer-by during the G-20 protests either.
Singapore laws are super strict (Score:1)