Anyone own up?

it's such a broad stroke approach, number plater/facial recognition.. anything useful will not be picked up. CCTV fails to identify any detail. this is several 1,000 meters further away.

I expect they will be using high powered sensors rather than SD/HD sensors used in CCTV.

But it is true that all this technology is cursed by poor data quality - ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) is said to be less than 65% accurate - but the police use it as if it were inerrant gospel: (from the Independent 17th Jan 10)

*Bhnisha Hirani, 28, drove from Essex to Coventry to collect her belongings last October after splitting up with a boyfriend whom she feared.

She says her request for a local police escort was refused as no officers were available. But two arrived later at the ex-boyfriend's house and seized her car for being uninsured. She offered her policy number, but says the officer refused to investigate why the car did not show up on the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) database.

Ms Hirani said the officers left her in the dark outside the house. "I was stranded – no money, no food, no coat, nothing." She stayed with a distant relative who lent her £150 to have the car released the next day.

In her complaint, she wrote: "I had offered every possible form of confirmation of my insurance at the scene and [the officer] refused to look at it.*

And whilst the ANPR systems routinely fines and prosecutes innocent people, CCTV has been shown in endless reports (mostly from the government themselves) to be absolutely ineffective.

**Home Office's study (292/2005) **

It would be easy to conclude from the information presented in this report that CCTV is not effective: the majority of the schemes evaluated did not reduce crime and even where there was a reduction this was mostly not due to CCTV; nor did CCTV schemes make people feel safer, much less change their behaviour.

University of Wales Violence Research Group, 1999

"This study provides no evidence of a deterrent effect."
[Effect of closed circuit television on urban violence (Violence Research Group, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff) 1999]

Local Government Studies,1999

“CCTV may actually undermine the natural surveillance in towns and communities . . . the result may be a further spiral of social fragmentation and atomization, which leads to more alienation and even more crime.”
['Towns on Television: Closed Circuit TV Systems in British Towns and Cities’]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Home Office Study 252 (2002)

Home Office study showed that CCTV an “undesirable effect” in Newcastle
– Total crime fell by 21.6% in the area with cameras but by 29.7% in the area where there were no cameras
It was found that CCTV had no effect on violent crimes (from five studies)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cambridge evaluation, 2007

“the Cambridge evaluation is consistent with prior research in showing no significant desirable effect of CCTV on crime in city centres.”
[The Cambridge evaluation of the effects of CCTV on crime]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

London Assembly, 2007

'there is no correlation between CCTV and crime clear-up rate
4 out of 5 of boroughs with most cameras have below average record of solving crime"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oxford Policing Policy Forum, 2008

“Britain is in danger of becoming a society where everyone is effectively 'on parole'”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

National CCTV Strategy Published October 2007

"Anecdotal evidence suggests that over 80% of the CCTV footage supplied to the police is far from ideal, especially if it is being used for primary identification or identities are unknown and identification is being sought, for instance, by media release."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2008 Campbell Collaboration Update to 2002 Study - (Part funded by National Policing Improvement Agency)
41 CCTV evaluations in four main settings: city and town centres; public housing; public transport; and car parks.

“the evaluations of CCTV schemes in city and town centres and public housing [...] as well as those focused on public transport, did not have a significant effect on crime.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It's almost as if BAE has an friend in central Gvt who is keen for the police to use these.

Of course.

wonder what they will cost us.. wonder what they will cost when you go on to factor the computational power needed to analyse and store the data it captures, staff to run it and expensive consultants hired in to build a case showing how effective they are.

Eventually when it is rolled out - billions, this first stage will incur "large capital costs" - but not to worry some of that will be clawed back by selling the data from the mass surveillance of the British public to commercial interests. Cool.