NYPD Building CCTV Camera System Which It Hopes Will Be Better than London’s

New York Police Department is building a closed-circuit TV surveillance system which it hopes ultimately will be more sophisticated and effective than the closed circuit TV (CCTV) system used by police in London and other British cities. The widespread use of CCTV monitoring in Britain has been touted by U.K. authorities as a critical tool for solving crimes and maintaining public order but has been criticized by civil libertarians as a Big Brother-like widespread invasion of personal privacy. According to official estimates, in London, the Metropolitan Police (a.k.a. Scotland Yard) and its partners in the City of London Police, who patrol the “square mile London borough that hosts most of Britain’s financial industry, have access to video from roughly 500,000 cameras