gargazons...
The Camera Watch Project at the Data Privacy Lab is devoted
to an awareness and a link repository for publicly available
online webcams. They note:
"At present, we estimate there are about 10,000 such cameras
displaying public places in the United States."
http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/dataprivacy/projects/camwatch/
An article at Dmusic elaborates:
"Professor Latonya Sweeney of the university's School of
Computer Science in Pittsburgh, says that tiny, inexpensive
digital cameras are keeping silent watches at about 10,000
or more public places in the U.S.
What's more, many of these cameras ? located at street
corners, parks, bars, beaches, and so ? are sharing what
they digitally capture with anyone online."
http://news.dmusic.com/print/11073
More precise figures are hard to come by, as noted in
this article by John McElhenny, Globe Correspondent,
dated 3/28/2004, on the Boston Globe website, titled,
'Smile, you're on security camera':
"Statistics are elusive. The trade organization ASIS
International, which lists 33,000 members and calls
itself the "preeminent organization for security
professionals," says nobody tracks numbers of
surveillance cameras in the U.S., though it has
commissioned a study to be completed by September
to measure the worldwide scope of the security
industry. Latanya Sweeney, director for the Carnegie
Mellon Data Privacy Lab in Pittsburgh, a think tank
on the relationship between technology and privacy,
says she's not aware of any such figures."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/03/28/smile_youre_on_security_camera?mode=PF
Still, we can examine the indicators from various sources.
Research shows that Great Britain currently has the largest
number of cameras per square mile on the planet.
This article from Tom's Hardware Guide elaborates on an
article originally appearing on Wired.com, noting that
the Great Britain currently has 300,000 public cameras
and intends to multiply that considerably, using the
technology from Pedagog USA, whose president plans to
promulgate a similar ubiquity in the US. Note that the
article was dated April 6, 2001:
"The president of Pedagog USA, a wireless application
service provider, is seeking to transplant the British
practice of widespread surveillance cameras in the US.
His company sells a system of wireless imaging networks
for a fraction of the cost of wired cameras. The British
government has embraced the system and will increase the
number of public cameras from 300,000 to 2 million over
the next three years, British authorities believe that
the system has been a significant factor in preventing
and solving crimes."
From Google's cache of the page:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:8jGl-hvDZGwJ:www17.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20010406.html+%22number+of+public+cameras%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en
Here's the original article at Wired.com:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42794,00.html
A more recent article in the New York Times is reproduced
in part in this post on earthli News, and suggests even
larger numbers of cameras in Great Britain:
"According to one estimate, there are 2.5 million
surveillance cameras in Britain, and in fact there
may be far more."
http://earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=170
New York has the most cameras of any US city, and they're
adding more. This article written by Bill Brown and
published in the "Genesis" issue, May 2003, ANIMAL New York,
and reproduced on the NotBored website, notes:
"Since 1998, the total number of public cameras (which can
be operated by either the police or private security firms)
has grown dramatically. In Times Square, for example, the
number of cameras has tripled since 1998. If we assume that
Times Square is representative of the city as whole, then
the total number of cameras in Manhattan is probably
approaching 9,000."
http://www.notbored.org/animalnewyork.html
This article on the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center
site talks about Times Square as well, and notes a 500%
increase in 5 years:
"In 1998, the NYCLU located a total of 2,397 surveillance
cameras in Manhattan; there were 75 in Times Square (the
area south of 50th Street, north of 42d, west of Fifth
Avenue and east of Eighth). In May 2000, we located and
mapped out 131 surveillance cameras in the same area (we
did not canvas all of Manhattan). In September 2002, we
returned to Times Square and (starting from scratch)
located, mapped out and counted the surveillance cameras
in operation there. Our findings were alarming. Times
Square contained (at least) 258 surveillance cameras,
fully twice the number we spotted in 2000 and more than
three times the number spotted by the NYCLU in 1998. In
May 2005, we counted 604 of them.
That's a 500% increase in five years. If this rate is
representative -- and, again, there is every reason to
think so (cf. rates of increase in other parts of Manhattan)
-- there are now approximately than 15,000 surveillance
cameras in public places in Manhattan as a whole. On
average, that's ten cameras per city block."
http://hm.indymedia.org/newswire/display/10712/index.php
Other indicators:
"Between 1998 and 2003, the number of public surveillance
cameras in Harlem TRIPLED"
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:-snnF7oDp5EJ:nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3%3Farticle_id%3D62407%26group%3Dwebcast+%22number+of+public+*+cameras%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en
August 5. 2005
"With the recent London bombings, several U.S. cities are
planning to increase the number of public surveillance
cameras."
http://www.wpr.org/cardin/index.cfm?strDirection=Prev&dteShowDate=2005-08-05%2008%3A00%3A00
The most authoritative article I found, dated May 2005,
on the Electronic Privacy Information Center site, and
including extensive references, notes the following:
"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has requested
more than $2 billion to finance grants to state and local
governments for homeland security needs. Some of this
money is being used by state and local governments to
create networks of surveillance cameras to watch over
the public in the streets, shopping centers, at airports
and more."
[...]
"Chicago has 2,250 cameras in its ?Homeland Security Grid"
[...]
"Several American cities looked to Great Britain?s
surveillance system when developing their own. London
has 200,000 cameras, and more than 4 million cameras
have been deployed throughout the country."
Much more on the page, and in citations:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0505.html
They also have a page which is a good resource on surveillance
cams, in general:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/
This article by IO ERROR, on his website about the follies
associated with the Department of Homeland Security, cites
the article above and includes links to sites for US states
where you can view the cams for that state:
http://www.ioerror.us/2005/05/16/homeland-security-wants-more-surveillance-cameras/
Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog
established through the "Request for Clarification" process.
sublime1-ga
Additional information may be found from an exploration of
the links resulting from the Google searches outlined below.
Searches done, via Google:
"number of public * cameras"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22number+of+public+*+cameras%22
"surveillance OR CCTV cameras in the US"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22surveillance+OR+CCTV+cameras+in+the+US%22 |
