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CCTV

"Britain is by far the most watched country in the World. We have five million cameras and it is increasing all the time." David Wood.

Spy in the sky?

CCTV

Ever had the feeling you are being watched on camera?

We've calculated there are a quarter of a million CCTV cameras spying on us in the North.

But do they really cut crime?

Or are they an alarming and unnecessary intrusion into our privacy?

Fifteen years ago, Britain barely had any CCTV cameras so what happened?

On camera

The murder of James Bulger in 1993 was captured on CCTV and provided a heartbreaking image that is still with us today.

It was a very emotional moment, and prompted a call for CCTV to be installed across Britain

As seen on camera - James Bulger's abduction. PA Images.

Soon CCTV was popping up in every city and town in the land.

Today CCTV cameras are everywhere - where we live, work, eat and shop, and along roads we drive on.

They're even in places where you might not expect them - in the back of cabs, on buses and trains.

The truth is that we're being spied upon far more than we perhaps imagine.

It's estimated there's one CCTV camera for every 14 of us - and it's claimed that every day we are caught on camera 300 times.

Candid camera

Inside Out attempted to find out how easy it is to be caught on camera during the course of a typical day.

We tried to count the cameras as we went about our daily business - it was not a scientific analysis, just based on observation.

After just half an hour on the road, we spotted 12 cameras.

In Newcastle city centre we were caught on camera again as we walked through The Gate entertainment complex.

Jude Leitch, The Gate's Marketing Manager, explains the need for these cameras:

"The cameras are not there to spy on people. We use them to help us keep the centre as safe as possible and we would hope they didn't know the cameras were there."

I spy...

Then we headed onto public transport and the Tyne and Wear Metro where we found Britain's largest and most complex CCTV network.

Tyne and Wear Metro boasts a huge CCTV network

More than 600 cameras cover the Metro system on stations and in trains.

The system cost 拢8 million and has cut crime on the system by a third in two years.

Our journey also took us to the Team Valley in Gateshead where we found ourselves being tracked by powerful pan tilt and zoom cameras.

Roger Brunning from Valley Watch says:

"Within months of putting the cameras in, we have killed crime by more than 80 per cent...

"We have given the police around 480 arrests that they wouldn't have got."

On the street where you live

Increasingly, cameras are being put into the streets where we live, observing us going about our lives.

We visit a control room in Sunderland, several miles away on the edge of the city which monitors 16 tower blocks run by the Sunderland Housing Group.

CCTV is everywhere you look. Photo - Getty Images.

The CCTV scheme has transformed the lives of the residents.

Four years ago these buildings were 50 per cent vacant - now they're full and there's a six month waiting list.

Resident Pat Ross explains the difference:

"You do feel safe because you have cameras all they way round the building.

"Anyone lurking around can be seen so it makes you feel safe."

CCTV may help detect crime but does it reduce it overall - or just displace it to places which don't have it?

Dr David Murakami Wood from the University of Newcastle says:

"Where they do work is preventing career criminals.

"They work rather less well in preventing violent crime - crimes that happen on the spur of the moment.

"So in fact rape and mugging CCTV has very little effect and this has been shown in Government surveys."

Cameras in the sky

Two years ago, a study of 14 systems on behalf of the Home Office found CCTV did little to cut crime or make people safer.

Another study paints a more mixed picture - 11 of the 22 systems reviewed had achieved a positive impact.

Chief Inspector Kevin Wellden believes that CCTV can be an important tool in fighting crime:

"Crime has come down across the board - CCTV is an asset. It isn't causing displacement that we can see聟"

The city caught on camera. Photo - 大象传媒 Science Library

Innovations in CCTV are developing at a fast pace.

Middlesbrough Town Centre even has a CCTV system that talks.

Northumbria Police is pioneering a new form of CCTV that reads the number plate of every car that passes.

Chief Inspector Kevin Welden defends any criticism that this is an intrusion into personal liberty:

"The law abiding citizen should not be worried at all.

"All it does is passively read a registration plate. If it is of interest to us then we will stop the vehicle. It is just the start of the investigation."

The system can tell the police instantly whether a vehicle is illegal.

Sci fi surveillance?

Innovations are set to transform the way CCTV monitors our lives the next decade, as Dr David Murakami Wood explains:

"We are going to see intensification in surveillance - the threat of terrorism - the use of microphones so we can been heard as well as seen - cameras getting smaller and will be imbedded in lampposts, for instance, and more mobile cameras mounted on flying devices.

"There is a university that has developed the camera the size of a bee to fly around..."

But he recognises the public's concerns, "The public might well lose their tolerance as the level of intrusion increases."

Peter Houlis from 20/20 Vision believes that the technology will become much more sophisticated:

"We are in the development stages of some very interesting technology coming on board.

"Facial recognition is no longer science fiction... And there are systems designed to detect stationary images."

So should we as ordinary citizens be concerned about it?

Peter Houlis says, "The technology can be trusted - but it's the people who are using it聟

"It is a very powerful tool - what happens with that evidence is much more concerning."

Intrusion or necessary invasion?

So who guards the guardians of the information collected on camera and doesn't this smack of Big Brother?

David Wood sees CCTV as a positive but necessary intrusion:

"It is more like there are many little brothers - there are many different people watching us all the time."

Big Brother is watching you? Photo - 大象传媒 Science Library

But the thought of someone taking some CCTV footage out of context and using it for other uses remains a worry.

This happened when film of the the Spencer Tunik nude art event was leaked by two civilian police staff, breaking the trust of the participants.

By the end of Inside Out's day trip we had spotted 246 cameras - many more than we had expected.

In terms of the future, surveillance looks likely to accelerate, and the downside will be that more and more aspects of our lives will be watched on a 24 hour basis.

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