We are never going to stop the technology being developed and used. And nor should we - the benefits can be enormous.
But we must put in place legislation that prevents abuse - and I think it needs to be broad and overarching.
I suggest
1. All monitoring of individuals / crowds in public
and semi-public areas must be clearly notified, and
the raw output of that monitoring must be made
publically available within a short and reasonable time
frame
2. All access to that raw feed and subsequent
processed feeds by government officials must be
audited and made available in raw form
3. Exceptions can only be made through warrants
signed by civil courts
Frankly, there are face recognition, laser scanners and more. Getting away with a crime in a public area will be almost impossible in 20 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that if only the police have access to that information, they will abuse it. Because they are good people mostly.
Afaik the DPA is aimed at processing of data, specifically excludes that collected for security warranted or not, has no teeth to it, has no provision to force the publication of data held as a matter of course (opt in not opt out) and has afaik no case law regarding surveillance (it's mostly focused on internal data processing)
we should assume that if I can see a camera I can go to surveillance.gov.UK enter my lat long, choose the camera from a list and see the raw feed - wave at it. And see who has acessed that feed in the past hour.
If that os not a normal reflex for people waiting to catch thier train, or walking to the shops, then we have not got the right legislation
But we must put in place legislation that prevents abuse - and I think it needs to be broad and overarching.
I suggest
Frankly, there are face recognition, laser scanners and more. Getting away with a crime in a public area will be almost impossible in 20 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that if only the police have access to that information, they will abuse it. Because they are good people mostly.