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I guess the point of the post in particular is the London outlier but honestly I've always found comparisons of CCTV with 'surveillance' in a meaningful sense of the term pretty cartoonish. Obviously living in London is not like living in some police state.
The same goes for China even. Public camera surveillance I think mostly does what it's supposed to do with very little intrusion into people's daily lives, in contrast to old school police stops and frisks. Travelling I've had more bad run ins with corrupt cops in Bulgaria than I had in Beijing.
This is a critical point, that CCTV and surveillance are two different, interrelated things.
Imagine you appear on 50 different CCTV cameras on an average day. Now imagine two different scenarios:
Scenario A: Each one of these cameras is operated by a local business or property management company. The cameras record video that gets overwritten within a few days if there are no incidents or requests from law enforcement.
Scenario B: All of these cameras are on a network operated by a company with contracts for the city, law enforcement, and digital advertising networks. Facial recognition technology tracks you across all 50 locations, with an "anonymized" identifier attached to your biometrics. This identifier can be cross-referenced with other "anonymized" identifiers to build an advertising profile, while another contractor's machine learning system builds a threat profile based on movements of these identifiers, flagging outliers for human review.
Both scenarios have the same number of cameras, but I don't think many would consider the two comparable.
> London is not like living in some police state
I lived there for 7 years and I don't share the same feelings. Sure it's not like you live in 1984 but it feels much more like a "police state" in comparison to the rest European capitals.
Anecdotal, but in my experience living in London, CCTV does fuck all. I've been robbed / stolen from multiple times in London, all caught on CCTV, never once helpful in apprehending any criminals or getting my possessions back to me.
And clearly not a great deterrent, as I've been the victim of more crimes in London than anywhere else.
> Obviously living in London is not like living in some police state.
In recent years, the police in London had a policy to harass anyone who was seen using a camera in a large, but completely unpublished, geofenced region of the city. That's not US/China/Saudi-level police state bad--as in, the UK police aren't able to arbitrarily confiscate cash or shoot people with impunity for having the wrong skin color--but it's bad enough that I consider such behavior a feature of a police state.
Any jurisdiction where it's not possible to perform the normal functions of everyday life, including creating works of art through photography, without fear of hostile police interaction is to some degree or other a police state.
I think the problem is that the infrastructure is being being built up. Even if they aren’t using the cameras right now for surveillance, the infrastructure is ready to be used be a bad actor in the future. I think that’s the real risk of building this up.
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> I've always found comparisons of CCTV with 'surveillance' in a meaningful sense of the term pretty cartoonish
I think your experience is related to class. When I read your comment I think - ok they must be a Petty Bourgeoisie or Bourgeoisie.
CCTV is used to catch and punish so called 'criminals'. But when many public spaces and parks in London have been sold off/privatized[1], and the Commons has been plundered everywhere (IP, knowledge, etc.)[2], the laws punishing 'theft' are pretty laughable to me. In my research lately, I've been coming to the conclusion that maybe the ones who are making the laws are the real criminals.
There are systemic thefts taking place: the slow privatization of public lands, the pay-to-play dynamics of modern day law, and the plunder of the educational and knowledge Commons through Intellectual Monopoly - making human curiousity illegal.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/05/revealed-how-...
[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/plunder-commons-...
The last time this appeared on HN [1], this chart was (rightfully) called out for being unsourced, garbage data.
This chart continues to be unsourced, garbage data. Look at the source for it - it is this spreadsheet. [2][3]
The primary source for all of China's figures in that spreadsheet is this [3][4] puff piece.
Now, the astute reader will notice something strange with this data. Somehow, the primary source [3][4] for the spreadsheet claims that camera/capita in China is similar to the rest of the world - yet, for some reason, the spreadsheet - and the subsequent article claims that all the major Chinese cities have an order of magnitude more cameras than the rest of the world.
Garbage in, garbage out. The methodology for gathering the per-city statistics was wildly inconsistent (There is incredibly obvious undercounting[3] happening for nearly every datapoint that's not in China), and the end product is completely worthless - unless you are, of course, using it to reinforce pre-existing biases.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20737023
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-WpH2KOiguKy9JTQ9zC...
[3] You can tell this spreadsheet is utter garbage, by looking at the entry for NYC in it. It claims that NYC has 31,490 cameras in it. I've visited NYC twice, and I've probably walked past more cameras than that in the ten days I was there.
[4] https://www.360kuai.com/pc/9d0f97d8eb6ea1d8f?cota=3&kuai_so=...
this comment should be at the top.
I live in China as a foreigner, I didn't lock my apartment for 3 years. In the first year I didn't even have a key since my flatmate lost it. I can literally walk in my neighbor's flat if I accidentally exit on the wrong floor. All their doors are wide open 24/7. Sometimes, small kids playing in the corridor open my door (the only reason I might lock the door hehe). Delivery guys leave all the boxes outside the front door. People leave their macbooks and bags unattended in coffee shops.
Surveillance surely plays a role in all this, the question is how much. How much is surveillance vs. the upbringing of an individual.
This is somewhat common throughout east Asia. Setting a phone or purse down to reserve a table is something I've in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and even Vietnam. There's less of an idea that criminals will be deterred from crime because of surveillance, but that nobody is crazy enough to want to steal a phone or just walk into someone's house. A lot of people here just can't imagine the thought process behind committing crimes like that.
Oh. The pro-CCP pro-firewall pro-surveillance fanbase is here !
How is cutting off at "150 most populated cities" relevant for this comparison?
Out of the 150 cities, 39 or 26% of them are in China making the candidate pool quite imbalanced to start with?
Going by the same data, we could also claim that:
"The Safest Cities in the World"
Qingdao China 7.42
Wuxi China 7.84
Hefei China 11.03
Nagoya Japan 11.21
Nanjing China 13.31
Ningbo China 14.75
Ji'nan China 15.79
Suzhou China 16.63
Dalian China 17.53
Fukuoka Japan 18.59
Xiamen China 19.09
yep. I live in a very small city (<80k) that is being abused as a test case for hyper-surveillance, including geofencing and cctv tuned to phone activity.
I question the accuracy. When I was in Korla, Xinjiang, there were exponentially more cameras than I noticed in the rest of China.
Cameras that wouldn't let a gate up unless they got your picture going into public places like malls or airports, cameras every few miles or so on highways, A few cameras for each road at an intersection, to name the interesting ones.
"Comparitech researchers collated a number of data resources and reports, including government reports, police websites, and news articles, to get some idea of the number of CCTV cameras in use in 150 major cities across the globe. We focused primarily on public CCTV—cameras used by government entities such as law enforcement."
They seem like VERY vey rough estimates. China probaly has the most surveilled city in the world. But effectiveness of camera's is a much more important factor. I've heard of many places in china where you are forced trough gates with photocamera's or active surveillance. China is more than likely to have the most fake camera's in the world as well.
https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
Every single person on earth knows you can't access the internet in Xinjiang. So cut the shit off. Propaganda Tool Man
Is there a distinction between privately run and state run CCTV?
Do Ring doorbells count in the survey, or is this just for the cameras that are monitored directly from the state police bunkers?
> Where possible, we have only included public CCTV cameras, including cameras installed on public buildings, cameras used by law enforcement, cameras installed on public transport, and traffic cameras with surveillance capabilities (i.e. automatic number plate recognition). However, in some instances, it may not be clear what cameras are included, meaning some private camera figures may also be included in the totals. We believe this may be the case for London and Sydney.
https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
I don't think even Orwell thought people would actually pay private enterprises to install listening devices (Amazon Echo etc.) and cloud connected surveillance video (Ring etc.) devices in their homes.
Iunno, but if anything, state-run CCTV has a lot more accountability in most countries than anything private run.
I've had an IDF soldier tell me that the old city of Jerusalem is the most surveilled place in the world, but I guess that wouldn't show up on this list because it's only a relatively tiny section of a much larger city (and who knows if they did their research on that or were just boasting).
Here is the data they used: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-WpH2KOiguKy9JTQ9zC...
And it's not very good data - as I mentioned in another post. The methodology for gathering it is second-hand, and wildly different across the different surveyed cities.
I live in a very well known city of approximately 34,000 residents and nearly 1400 CCTV cameras. I wonder how many cities fly under the radar in this regard.
I work at a place that has tons of CCTV cameras monitoring the bird droppings and the comings and goings of people throughout the day. When crime occurs, we review the CCTV footage. We often capture footage of people behaving badly and even breaking the law. We curse under our breaths at the terrible acts these people have committed. Next we try to identify the people. This is the hard part. Normally, we have no way of identifying the people captured on film. Perhaps if our company permitted us, we could upload this footage to say, Youtube and let the hive algorithm attack and identify. Until then, our film will end up on a hard drive until forgotten about and deleted. When the cameras are all doing facial recognition we should worry. Until then, I think, there is a certain degree of anonomity when captured by CCTV surveillance cameras.
Is anyone truly surprised? The future looks bleak with China set to become the global leader (it is just a matter of time at this point, especially thanks to COVID).
I only hope for India to also become a major powerhouse to curb China, and for Korea and Japan to regain their footing.
Even if the government weren't incentivized to surveil everywhere, it's a no brainer for people to install cameras around their businesses/homes/cars for liability purposes since they are so cheap now.
A couple hundred dollars can reduce a lot of headache, and I don't see that incentive going away anytime. I assume every car will have a dash cam, a house will have a doorbell cam or similar, and every business is monitored everywhere. And cities/states will have license plate readers on police cars/roads.
I am a little surprised and quite saddened that Sydney ranks 8th out of non Chinese cities.
All of a sudden I'm _way_ more predisposed to wearing a mask in public 100% of the time. And a hat. and sunglasses - even at night... :sigh:
>The future looks bleak with China set to become the global leader
We get what we deserve. At least two generations have stood by and allowed the West and its influence on the world stage to be degraded and eroded without so much as batting an eyelid.
When one steps back and looks at what they've facilitated, one starts to see some reality in the "strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men" cycle often touted.
They will have missed Monaco, as they only looked at the 150 most populated cities. When I was there around the millennium it was the clear leader in police officers per head of population, so I expect it’s also doing well on cameras.
The reason they missed it, is because their data is complete rubbish.
This is the source for their chart. [1] It claims that NYC has a mere 31,490 cameras. As anyone who's ever been in NYC will tell you, that is complete and utter nonsense.
[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-WpH2KOiguKy9JTQ9zC...
Maybe that's because Monaco is touristy place.
I've been wondering if the combination of remote work and self-driving cars will counteract the increasing surveillance of urban centers. Does suburbanization/sprawl make surveillance too expensive to be practical?
The self-driving cars can act as super surveillance systems by themselves though.
You'd wish, but I think there will definitely be home office surveillance in the employee contract if the economic situation of recent years continues.
Suburbanization also makes satellite surveillance easier and "acustic" face to face interaction much more difficult.
I'm surprised that Urumqi (the capital of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) doesn't show up on this list, given
how serious the CCP takes security there [1]. Maybe the study's authors simply didn't have access to data for that region.
No Wuhan on the list? I guess we'll never know who ate the bat.
Looking at London, here is a chart of knife attacks 2010-2019:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-lo...
Other random comparisons:
2019 murders in London (population ~9 million): 149
2019 murders in Houston (population ~7 million): 140
2019 murders in Chicago (population ~2.5 million): 490
It seems difficult to assess the impact of surveillance cameras on crime. There are many factors that would impact it. It may be more instructive to look at the 'solved crime' rate. Does the % of convictions positively correlate with the number of cameras?
I, and many people I know, have been the victims of property crimes and other crimes several times over in Seattle. The understaffed police force (meaning per-capita officer counts well below median) are unable to investigate these crimes and so perpetrators are never identified and arrested. This is because violent crimes take priority and so there simply isn't enough staffing to devote time to other crimes.
Surveillance and facial recognition could help our police force effectively put this limited staff to use, so that criminals face consequences and crime is deterred. I have no problem using technology to enforce existing law effectively, just as I have no problem with cops using cell phones or vehicles to do their job. I do find the dystopian extent of how these technologies are used in China (e.g. social scores) to be unacceptable, but we can institute the right regulations around these technologies to prevent broader abuse while still retaining the benefits (a cheaper and more effective police force).
Before the pandemic, you were probably caught on camera committing several crimes. Nothing serious. Some jaywalking, maybe, or perhaps you stood on private property without knowing it, or you were smoking a few centimetres too close to an entrance ... there are dozens of possibilities. Hundreds.
Now: you are T-boned by a car running a red light. The driver is the son of a police captain. You want to press charges, but suddenly, you are being indicted for dozens of crimes. It took all of minutes for the police to pull out every single time you were in public for the past 7 years and, thanks to the wonders of AI, not much longer to narrow down to the forty or fifty occasions during which they have you on record as committing a crime.
Are you still sure you want to press charges against the captain's son? Or should bygones be bygones? Because it will be hard to press charges and fight dozens of charges in court, one at a time. In fact you will be in and out of court for years to come. Or not. Who knows?
Camera's dont 'surveil' anything untill a crime has been committed. Only then do people search for active camera's and hope it was pointing the right way in daylight or good enough infra. China esp will boast camera's everywhere as its a dictatorship but with thousands of camera's that may or may not work its like finding a needle in a haystack. Every country has a different reason for camera's and china especially has a different purpose in mind. Its not like their courts or policeforces are working on the basis of innocent until proven guilty. Being surveilled isn't the goal here, its instilling fear of possibly being surveilled (Which is highly likely). Once you've fooled the population into thinking everything they do will seen by the highest authority, that's when you're closer to the holy grail of true power.