A book review inthe 14 March issue of the TLS said that there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people; it does not say whether this figure is only that of the governments cameras or includes store-cameras, etc. In any case,it does not seem that this has prevented the crime-rate from rising or improved conviction-trates. A 2006 report, cited by the BBC, said that Britain was the most "surveiled country" of western industrialized states.The report coincides with the publication by the human rights group Privacy International of figures that suggest Britain is the worst Western democracy at protecting individual privacy.The two worst countries in the 36-nation survey are Malaysia and China, and Britain is one of the bottom five with "endemic surveillance"I wonder how many of these cameras there are in the USA. I suspect that there are many more of them in Washington, D.C., and in New York City than is commonly known.Wikipedia has an article on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television