What is it with the Metropolitan Police Service and public CCTV cameras ?
Not content with trying to force them on to every licensed premises, as part of the alcohol or entertainment license application process, something for which the Information Commissioner has had to criticise them for, their latest anti-terrorism poster campaign is peddling nonsensical falsehoods about terrorist bombs and CCTV cameras.
See Spy Blog: Metropolitan Police terrorism fear Propaganda Poster lies about bombs, reconnaissance and CCTV cameras
This campaign includes this false and misleading poster, which claims a non existent link between public CCTV and protection against terrorist bombs:
"A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras"
There is no evidence that any Islamic extremist or Irish terrorists or Animal Rights extremists or neo-Nazi extremists, who have exploded, or tried to explode bombs, or set off incendiary devices, have been deterred from doing so by the presence of CCTV cameras. Some may have been tracked down partially through the help of CCTV footage, after their attacks or attempted attacks, but that is not what this poster is implying.
There is no evidence that any of them who have actually had access to any explosives, have ever been caught in the act of "terrorist reconnaissance" of CCTV cameras, neither by members of the public (which is what this poster misleadingly claims), nor by regular Police street patrols, nor even by any covert surveillance of known suspects.
Since you do not need any equipment to check out where public CCTV cameras are, just your eyes and your memory, it is unlikely that any real terrorism or criminal reconnaissance of CCTV camera systems will ever be detected in the way that this poster implies.
This poster is just Climate of Fear propaganda, and it will no doubt be used to justify the harassment of photographers taking photos, perfectly legally in public places, which have been infested with CCTV spy cameras, something for which there is plenty of evidence for.
See Matt Wardman's Official Harassment of Photographers in the UK: I have a Little List
We are reporting this misleading poster to the Advertising Standards Authority, and urge you all to do the same.
Will Mayor of London Boris Johnson tolerate this ineffective, wasteful and repressive propaganda nonsense or not ?
Having multitude of CCTVs installed is one thing, possessing the manpower to man them is another. If all those hours and hours of video is left unwatched, what's the point really?
I was just staring at this poster sometime back but didn't really think much about it. Like the numerous CCTVs installed in the capital, the ad has somewhat faded into the background.