The British government has responded to public concern about the vast number of closed circuit…

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http://www.euronews.com/2013/08/12/who-s-watching-you-and-who-monitors-the-watchers
The British government has responded to public concern about the vast number of closed circuit surveillance cameras in the UK with a new code of conduct for their use.

There will also be a commissioner to administer it, but that person does not have any power to enforce the code, which also applies to number plate recognition systems.

The commissioner will only be able to suggest best practice to police forces and local authorities which are covered by the code.

The UK government said: “The purpose of the code will be to ensure that individuals and wider communities have confidence that surveillance cameras are deployed to protect and support them, rather than spy on them.”

Britons have mixed feelings about the up to ==six million cameras== in operation there.

In central London one man told euronews: “They’re everywhere. Quite often one doesn’t even see them but we know they’re there. It doesn’t bother me.”

While a woman was ambivalent: “In some aspects it’s good because you feel protected, but another aspect you are being watched all the time so it can be an invasion of privacy.”

Many follow the philosophy that they are a necessary in these days of terrorism. As one Londoner said about the cameras: “I don’t regard them as an invasion of privacy, because we are living in dangerous, volatile times.”

Civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch has called the code of conduct “a step in the right direction” but also wants penalties and laws to enforce the rules.

Emma Carr, Deputy Director of ==Big Brother Watch== told euronews: “We need a code of practice that is more than just a code. It needs to be an enforceable, legal, statute, which means that is enforceable so if you break that code, no matter whether you are public or private sector camera operator, there will be penalties in place to bring you in front of the law and say you have broken the data protection act, you have broken this code of practice and we need to hold you to account.”

Our London correspondent, Ali May, concluded: “When George Orwell came up with ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ in his book ‘1984’, he couldn’t probably imagine that his country, Britain, just over half a century down the line will be using one fifth of the world’s closed circuit cameras to monitor its people’s every move, let alone the coming of a day when a code of practice would be introduced for the use of CCTV.”

==The code – PDF==

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