It got pretty ridiculous at one point where one restaurant I knew of was told to put up 5 CCTV cameras by the police as a condition of their alcohol licence.
This wasn't a pack 'em and feed 'em booze restaurant, just a perfectly normal couples style restaurant.
Afaik the local council eventually reined the police in, but the police just don't seem to view any of it as a massive invasion of privacy, or consider the cost to the businesses involved.
There's only upsides for the police requesting more, no downsides as they don't bear the cost.
This is a reference to the Charles Stross's Laundry Files series. SCORPION STARE is a firmware update to CC cameras that allows any two cameras can look at a target and destroy it. Without too many spoilers, the first time it's used automatically, bad training data causes a lot of civilian casualties.
It got pretty ridiculous at one point where one restaurant I knew of was told to put up 5 CCTV cameras by the police as a condition of their alcohol licence.
This wasn't a pack 'em and feed 'em booze restaurant, just a perfectly normal couples style restaurant.
Afaik the local council eventually reined the police in, but the police just don't seem to view any of it as a massive invasion of privacy, or consider the cost to the businesses involved.
There's only upsides for the police requesting more, no downsides as they don't bear the cost.