Subscriber Discussion

How Many Publicly Owned Cameras Are There?

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Brice Sloan
Jul 17, 2014

I was asked the other day "how many publicly-owned cameras there were in the US?" This would generally mean city, county, and state government owned cameras. I did some quick research and came up with some 2013 stats on London, some info on Chicago and Boston (relevant to the bombing). Is there any place I could go for updated statistics? Ideas?

Thanks!

JH
John Honovich
Jul 17, 2014
IPVM

Everyone's guessing. There's no well measured statistic here. I am not even going to try.

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Brice Sloan
Jul 18, 2014

You could at least make up a statistic?

JH
John Honovich
Jul 18, 2014
IPVM

Lol.

Millions in the US. Part of the question is what counts?

Police? Courthouses? Libraries? Transit? Public schools? I am sure there are other organizations / facilities that are somehow publicly owned or funded.

RW
Rukmini Wilson
Jul 18, 2014

FWIW, for total cameras including public and private, I think there are easily 50 million cameras in the US, maybe 100 million.

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Brice Sloan
Jul 18, 2014

I knew you'd come through! In general, I would say defined by video that could be subject to a freedom of information request.

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