Stupid: London Has 100x The Surveillance Cameras As NYC

JH
John Honovich
Apr 26, 2013
IPVM

CNN Money has some amazingly wrong reporting, claiming London has a half million cameras while NYC 'only has 3 to 6,000' cameras. There's no explanation of where this number comes from, but it's obviously comparing apples to oranges as the half million figure almost certainly includes private cameras while the tiny NYC figure likely alludes only to Manhattan municipal cameras. Here's the video:

Also, they claim that a camera with a 'decent megapixel count' costs $3,000 compared to $1,500 to one that does not. No reference of what that includes - indoor/outdoor, storage, VMS, etc. Obviously, a fairly high figure.

SP
Sean Patton
Apr 26, 2013

*CNN Money* - was a little confused at who CCTV Money was for a minute there... Also: CNN has biased, incorrect, limited reporting????? Interesting video either way; I don't imagine there will ever be any accurate, non-sensational stories regarding our industry. Just imagine what the infosec people see/read/laugh about on a daily basis.

JH
John Honovich
Apr 26, 2013
IPVM

Fixed that reference, thanks! CCTV Money - lol, that should be a nickname for an analog sales guy :)

I don't imagine it's biased (I doubt they care about making one city look better than another) but it's incredibly sloppy reporting. Wouldn't the reporter ask themselves - "Are we sure that London really has 100x more cameras than NYC given that they basically have the same population?" This isn't as much as a surveillance domain issue as common sense of an educated person.

SP
Sean Patton
Apr 26, 2013

Honest question that I dont have time to google; How do the 2 cities compare in Sq Mileage? Comparing population is one aspect, but I think that might be hard for both cities, as I imagine both cities populations balloon during the work day with hundreds of thousands of commuters and tourists entering each city every day

JH
John Honovich
Apr 26, 2013
IPVM

According to Google, London's total area is 660 square miles while NYC is 468. So London's modestly larger but not anything that would result in one having 100x more than another.

SP
Sean Patton
Apr 26, 2013

The simple fact is that NYC Schools have at least 20,000 cameras (could be much more), on their Genetec System... so clearly they aren't counting those.

Could they be counting just in downtown Manhattan? vs all of Greater London?

JH
John Honovich
Apr 26, 2013
IPVM

And there's cameras in different departments / agencies of NYC, and then there's the cameras that essentially every retailer has and the cameras that almost all large buildings have, etc., etc.

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Apr 27, 2013
IPVMU Certified

apparently in London it takes 1000 cameras to solve a crime...

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