Really? I did not know that! Are they as ubiquitous as London's system? (ie. literally every street and corner in the city is covered by a camera)

The only use of cameras in the US that I know of is for red-light cameras, and even those are hotly debated.

> (ie. literally every street and corner in the city is covered by a camera)

Many street corners have CCTV cameras. The vast majority of them are run by businesses rather than the government and are decentralised, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread. It is possible for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to obtain footage from the CCTV stations with warrants if they physically go to the businesses and ask for it. You are perpetuating a half-truth.

(Context: I am from London. I do not give a shit about CCTV cameras OR the Olympics.)

Perhaps that's why the US has such a massively high crime rate compared to London.

Given a choice between being knifed/shot/mugged etc, and having a camera watch me, I'd choose the latter.

Or perhaps not.

Other countries in western Europe are fine without it, and with a low(er) crime rate to boot.

You believe in a connection between surveillance and crimes. Exactly that assumption is the part that seems debatable - even if we ignore the whole privacy argument.

And your source is..? I think my post stated that this is exactly the problem: The 'facts' you list are disputed, the discussion ongoing.

This interpretation of yours is not proven. Opponents argue that most statistics are of the causation != correlation kind and that thinking that CCTVs stop crimes is like believing in stopping piracy by suing old ladys for downloading 3 Britney Spears songs.

Unfortunately it still happens, the only difference is they have footage.

It's not just CCTV, cameras are ubiquitous, in everyones pockets.

Just look at the London riots, and the mugging of a student after he had already been attacked.

It was caught both on smartphone and on CCTV. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15232750

Even faced with video evidence they pleaded not guilty. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/02/john-kafunda-reec...

They've now been sentenced to 5 and 3.5 years in jail.

The cameras didn't stop it happening. The police watch from afar and convict later.

You're picking out a couple of rare cases, and saying "it still happens".

Try living in the US for a while. Over there it happens every day.

I'm picking out a case that was caught on CCTV

I'm suggesting that while CCTV provides footage for conviction it doesn't actually make you safer and stop things in progress.

It doesn't matter where you live.

I would like a source for this, particularly for Japan.

I live in Japan. No source, but most utility poles in Tokyo have surveillance cameras attached to them. I can provide pictures if you'd like.