Monday, April 16, 2018

Big Brother is Watching


The residents of the London Borough of Hackney are probably the most spied upon people on the planet. Hackney has more CCTV cameras than the cities of Bristol, Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Chelmsford and Liverpool. Hackney’s 2,246 CCTV cameras means the borough has more cameras than any other local authority in the country - more than any town or city (excluding London itself) in the UK.

Outside of London the leafy Surrey town of Woking is the most spied upon. Woking has more CCTV cameras than the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. Bristol is the most watched city in the UK (excluding London), Birmingham comes second despite having over twice the population of Bristol.

If you want to know more about the most spied upon towns and cities in the UK then you can consult the UK's CCTV Hotspot map. This map shows the top 20 towns and the top 20 cities with the most CCTV cameras and the number of cameras in every London borough. The map is based on data from Big Brother Watch and the Office for National Statistics. I suspect this means that the map wildly underestimates the actual number of cameras. For example, it claims that Newham has just 204 CCTV cameras. There must be that many cameras in the Olympic Park alone

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