A walk around downtown Vancouver by 25 volunteers on a pleasant summer Sunday found 1,200 security cameras pointing at streets and sidewalks.
"It's more than I thought," said SFU communication professor Richard Smith. "These are just the cameras you can see from the street."
The inventory, conducted Aug. 23 with the Vancouver Public Space Network, was a pre-Olympic project meant to spur public discussion on the use of closed circuit cameras to monitor activity and whether they actually discourage the use of public space by lawful citizens.
"We need a dialogue about this and ultimately we probably need some laws or regulations around the use of these," Smith said.
Vancouver's count is puny compared to Great Britain's which has 4.2 million cameras. Some 2,000 are worn by police there. Victoria debuted body-mounted cameras last summer.
Proponents say cameras are an extra set of eyes because police can't be everywhere. Smith counters security cameras have been oversold as a convenient security measure, even though the deterrent to crime is questionable. Cameras are better suited for evidence gathering.
"One of the worst things that can happen is there's a whole bunch of cameras that make people feel like they're being watched all the time and when you do turn to them for evidence they're not working," Smith said.
Nine-hundred cameras are expected to be installed around 2010 Winter Olympics venues under a $30.5 million RCMP deal with Honeywell. The cameras are supposed to be returned after the Games are over.
