Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched? If you've been to a store or gone to the bank machine, even walked out the front door of your condo, your image has been captured by closed-circuit television (CCTV), probably several times a day, every day.   We live in relative anonymity in Canada, compared to places like the United Kingdom, where multiple cameras are on every street corner and people have become used to the idea that they’re filmed an average of 300 times a day when out for a stroll through central London. 



Critics of the cameras argue that they're not as successful at preventing crime as intended, and that they divert money and energy away from traditional forms of crime prevention such as police on foot or even citizens in neighbourhoods who keep an eye out for one another. Inevitably, the images produced by cameras, and used by police to track down a criminal, are of the top of a dark hooded sweatshirt in low resolution and frequently of no help to them at all; though the faces of people who aren't consciously concealed are much more visible.

For now, Canada has stricter privacy laws than the UK, laws that restrict the use of CCTV cameras and other forms of surveillance, but these laws are constantly under attack by zealous agencies and politicians who feel they have the right to watch your every move at the expense of your rights as a citizen not to be under anybody's watchful eye.  Like it or not, the cameras are here to stay and you'll start to see them more often as we become an increasingly paranoid and security conscious society; always looking over our shoulder to make sure things are on the up and up, and if we forget, the cameras will have our back - and our front. Belfast