Groundspeak Portal

I wasn't planning on starting the category, but this article and some of the comments made me think that it was ripe for a category. London is one of the most CCTV filled areas in the world. It would make sense to counter the Big Brother campaign with a list of them.

Is there a law about watching the watchers?

The category might work if it were limited to government/police/military CCTV, and excluded private security cameras like the ones watching the bank headquarters skyscraper where I work.  I pass through the view of five different monitored cameras just to walk from my desk, take the elevator and go across the plaza to the next building to get a latte at Starbucks.  Which, now that I'm thinking of it, I shall go do right now after posting this.  Anyhow, all of these are operated by my employer for company security purposes and are of no particular interest to the general public.

A good management group name would be Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who's watching the watchers?"), long a favorite rallying cry of big brother conspiracy theorists.  I am reminded of this phrase by today's amusing thread in the forums for the soggy boxes in the woods game, where the phrase is used as a subtitle in a thread vaguely alleging improprieties in the geocache review system.

I think there needs to be some limitation, or you'll have hundred of cameras. A minimum distance between waymarks would be good (say 0.1 mile) I thought about this as I was counting cameras in the subway station today. In about 500 feet of station there were 15 cameras.

I think this would basically allow a person to waymark almost anywhere in many cities.  I counted 4 on top the front of my local walmart plus a couple more in the parking lot.  This does not count those on each side and in the back... plus who knows how many more inside.  The local mall has full coverage both inside and out.  McDonalds has one too.  Starbucks has one too.  Many of the office buildings have them hanging from the roof.  I think you get the idea... may as well waymark where you can get an AM radio signal

Have to ask... why would I want to Waymark these locations?  It doesn't sound very interesting to visit such a place.

 

BQ

Not sure if this is meant seriously but ... I'd say there would be (to my mind at least) massive problems with "prevalence" and "interesting & informative".

As you note there are loads of CCTVs in London, and none of them are in the least bit interesting.  Why one earth would anyone want to a) photograph or b) visit one of these?

There was even one in my back garden last year (I was observing the urban foxes).

I suspect the writer of the following comment did not mean for it to be taken literally. 

"I wonder what they will do as photographing CCTV cameras becomes the next hot photography fad? If something as inane as train-spotting can catch on, surely a whole new subculture that rotates around documenting and collecting Big Brother paraphernalia could emerge."

They were daring the nerds out there to be nerdy enough as to photograph CCTV cameras.  Are we up for it?