I forgot to mention, the future is already here in some places. In Las Vegas, the casinos already use the face recognition software to detect and monitor known cheats. Private firms employed by the casinos track these people outside the casinos too, IIRC.
I immediately pictured dozens of people goofing on the cameras. A few ideas:
A flashmob of people surrounding the camera. Those who aren’t looking through binoculars are looking and pointing at the camera in mock horror. After ten minutes, everyone leaves.
Two people near the camera appear to be having an angry argument, with broad, dramatic gestures. What they are yelling is, “Hello, Harvey, how’s the wife?” “She’s doing better, thanks. Did you get your lawnmower fixed?” “It’s still in the shop. Can I borrow yours?” “Of course you can. What are you doing down here?” “I’m waiting for a bus; and you?” “I just got a haircut. I feel wonderful.” “Me, too. I’m completely at peace. I haven’t an enemy in the world!”
For five minutes, three people take turns dashing from one parking meter to the next and back. The two not running are applauding the runner. Then they walk away in different directions.
Two people, for six minutes, perform an elaborate dance, incorporating elements of touchdown celebrations, the chicken dance, courting challenges of male wild turkeys, and Flamenco. Then they bow, shake hands, gesture a thank you to the camera, and walk away.
Sixteen consecutive people enter the camera’s range, look up to the lens, and sing one line of the national anthem, including the verses nobody ever sings, and walk on. no more than one on camera at a time. 
I think my real issues are not so much with the cameras, but with the politicians behind them. (Metaphoricaly behind them. Obviously politicians wouldn’t want to watch a camera unless it was in a changing room or looking in someone’s window)
Sixteen months after they’ve installed them ‘in public areas’ they announce “Cameras have worked well as reducing crime but as we’ve not eliminated the nightly murders in the area we’re going to be putting cameras in many many more places. And hiding them so you can’t just behave when you know they’re around”
I’m going hyperbole but you get my point I trust.
You realize that if the police wanted to follow you around, it would be completely legal, don’t you? Haven’t you ever heard of “tailing a suspect”?
So what? As long as there still recording a public place I’m still not seeing a problem.
You see a difference, I hope, between tailing someone who is reasonably suspected of committing a crime and tailing someone who is not?
I guess you don’t see my point. I think I should go to bed. First I shall explain what I meant.
I’m worried they’re going to use the existing schemes as a point in the defence of putting them in positions which are not public places
It’s a slipperly slope argument. I can see the possibility of a slide down that slope, the question is only ‘How Far Down?’
It’s not that slippery.
Non-puplic places are off limits to the cameras. The people in Atlanta being watched in a restroom had their rights violated.
It’s a prettly clear cut edge of a cliff. There isn’t a slope at all.
Whatever it’s supposed to do, I highly doubt it’s going to do it. Even the dumb criminals learn quickly how best to evade the law.
I don’t go out into public to be seen by others. I go out into public to do things I can’t do at home. I don’t need to be watched at the bloody park taking a walk. One reason I don’t go out into public is to commit crimes, believe it or not.
I go to Target, I go on an airplane, I go to the mall, I’m not on public property. They have the right to stare at me and throw me out for standing around or making a fuss and that’s fine. It’s not my property and I don’t necessarily belong there.
It’s not until you get harrassed for doing absolutely nothing that you realize you have plenty to hide and you don’t need someone watching you or squawking at you to move along. Screw you, I’m waiting for someone.
In public, I can sit and stand where I damn well please, I can drive safely on the highway without being stopped for routine inspections. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not a suspect and I don’t want to be. It is still a free country and I sure as hell want to keep it that way.
I disagree. There is already quite an expansive gray area whenever private property can be seen from a public area. If you have a house with a large picture window right next to a busy street, is there a reasonable expectation of privacy behind this window? How about if the window is partially obscured, and set back from the street? If the house is on a smaller residential street? If the window is covered with translucent blinds? If it is only visible from a ladder on one small corner of an adjoining private property? How about observing the house using other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, which even the walls might be transparent to? A line has to be drawn somewhere in there (and I think courts in the US have ruled that using an IR camera to observe a private residence requires a search warrant).
Also, once there are cameras, there will be pressure to automate the system, even without nefarious motives. Facial recognition software will save money, will identify wanted criminals, will alert police faster than a human operator. Once the system is automated, it’ll be networked, and eventually centralized and expanded like every government project.
Also, do you really trust everyone who will have access to this surveillance? There have already been scandals involving operators in London using the security cameras to peer inside private apartments. And on a larger scale, there is immense potential for misuse – it could be used to track political opponents (merely to learn their strategy and outmaneuver them, of course…) or for personal reasons (the department head wants to track her kids, or her husband, or…). There’s already more than enough abuse with current technologies; let’s not make it any easier.
This is the part where I’m supposed to claim that I have nothing to hide. But why should I have to say that? What reason do you have to think I do have something to hide, and are these reasons strong enough to justify monitoring me? There seems to be an implicit suspicion of the entire public, where everyone is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent by the cameras.
Even worse, what about the crooked operators who tell burglars when you’re not home, in exchange for a cut of the take?
When Pepper Mill and I visited Dublin several years ago, we sat down to rest in a public square (I was rubbing her feet through her shoes. We;'d been walking all day. I didn’t dare take the shoes off, because I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get them back on.) As we sat, watching Irish life go on around us (including one guy getting stripped and dumped into a public fountain – we thought that might be some sort of Groom’s party prank. But for all we know Dubliners routinely strip random guys and throw them into fountains) we noticed camera up on the flagpoles, utility poles, and buildings around us, and we started counting them. I forget the number, but there were a lot of cameras looking at that square. Too many to be from any one agency – I suspect there were police cameras and private security cameras from the companies in the big buildings, and so on. And this was a decade ago or so.
It was a public space, so I’m not really bothered by it. And, even with storage and data compression, the problem is that you’d have to watch all of that recorded footage to really get close to violating anyone’s rights. I don’t think there are enough watchers, with enough concentration to fo that.
One evening in London, I saw a police van sitting at a busy corner (Queensway & Bayswater). It had a pole sticking up at each corner topped with a camera. Since this was a high pedestrian restaurant and pub area and it was Friday night, we figured it was more for discouraging drunken hijinks than to really catch anyone. It wasn’t there any other night. A good way to project a police presence without any overt actions.
For those of you who have large picture windows and routinely strip naked in front of them but worry that cctv cameras might be able to see you .
Why not buy yourself some net curtains.
Or decide to blackmail you by letting your wife know about that visit to that sexual fetish shop you made when you were supposed to be picking up a gallon of milk?
I wonder why sexual matters sometimes involves milk in some way. Either you’re wife is banging some dude while you’re getting a gallon of milk, or you are offspring of the milkman. And now we have going to the fetish shop while getting some milk. 
Here’s a little something on the subject…
How would they know your supposed to be getting milk, and not an 18"IBDHJD?
The cameras won’t cover every square inch of your town. They won’t be able to track every move you make from your front door to where ever you go.
Any photographer can photograph any building from ‘public area’ like a street. If I’m standing in the street I can photograph your house and your picture window and anything that displays in that window. This is already determined by the courts.
IIRC the courts ruled that the police do not need a warrent to us IR on your house. The case involved an IR (infra-red) camera on a police helicoptor. They kind you see on TV when they do chases at night. Well a camera noticed that a particular house was very ‘hot’ compared to it’s neighbors. That started to an investigation which lead police to discover a large ‘hot house’ for growing pot. The court ruled in favor of this being admissable.
As far as system abuse goes, so what? Police abuse their powers all the time, but we have systems in place to deal with those abuses. The fact that police may abuse a system is no reason to dismiss it. You just have to build in systems to keep it from going undiscovered. Yes, there are ways to do that.
Now this part of your response doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’ve seen those facial recognition programs, they seem to work wonders. Don’t you want, wanted criminals off the street?
Then you clain tha the system will be ‘automated’, ‘networked’, ‘eventually centralized’, and ‘expanded’, just like every government program.
Well the automation part removes your own fears of operator abuse. The system will be networked and centralized from day one. Not evey government project is expanded. They are frequently shut down or curtailed by the next guy into office.
No, that’s wrong. The Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is required for infrared surveillance of a house: Kyllo v. United States, 533 US 27 (2000):
As for ubiquitous surveillance cameras (as opposed to a few in high-traffic areas), I remain opposed to it. I think there is an unspoken assumption among supporters that government is benevolent. Well, yeah, government is more or less benevolent now. Should we assume it will always be thus? And should we hand government a tool that would instantly convert to nefarious use if that government ever became repressive?
Dr. spoke- prescribes a viewing of the admittedly fanciful, but still thought-provoking Enemy of the State.