It's even worse, it means the police know it doesn't track criminals and so just want to track regular people.
It tests the water of how much the population is willing to be under surveillance.
Like boiling a frog you don't notice how much surveillance there is until it's too late.
In 2002 Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, with a research interest in thermal relations of amphibians, said that "The legend is entirely incorrect!" He described how a critical thermal maximum for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F, or 1.1 °C, per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if the container allows it"
edit: Hehe I left HN after writing that to do something 'more useful', reading The Inmates are Running the Asylum. On about the 2nd page I read was:
"A frog that’s slipped into a pot of cold water never recognizes the deadly rising temperature as the stove heats the pot. Instead, the heat anesthetizes the frog’s senses. I was unaware, like the frog, of my cameras’ slow march from easy to hard to use as they slowly became computerized."
Never-the-less I respect a good nitpick and I didn't know the article so for me it's a welcome reply
What you might consider "English" is two countries and four nations. It's complicated. For safety, I'd refer to the two large islands off the NW of mainland Europe as "Britain and Ireland" (in short.) It's complicated.
The police knowing is really beside the point, local government (councils) own and operate the public space CCTV, the police will and do make use of it. The problem is quality and with quality is identification. If no one knows the person on CCTV there's not much to be done.
Maybe it's just paranoia but I neither want to have to hide my face nor worry about getting spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time by accident.
Councils on the other hand are a different thing.
