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  First of all PaulB I agree that the surveilance society has gone too far. Further Government proposals to increase snooping on our private lives, id cards etc just make it worse.
  
  That said I do think you need to be careful about how you interpret this and look for hidden agendas. The police want more resources and this is clearly part of there agenda to place pressure for those resources. Fair enough, I agree with them and what I have said is not a critisism but you need to be aware of what motivates this publicity.
  
  As always there are grains of truth in what they say but it is possible to be selective to illustrate a point. One part of that is to exaggerate and distort the original motivation for the installation of cameras.
  
  I was responsible for getting through the initial CCTV system in Dover when I was Chairman of what was then the Technical Services Committee. I managed to get the system approved at no extra cost to the council tax with some extra charges only on those car parks protected with cameras. We lost a by-election, and with it Council control, between approving the scheme and it being installed so I was no longer the Chairman when the scheme was opened.
  
  The original idea was to provide increased security for the car parks and after a visit to Kings Lynn we decided to extend it a little to gain extra value from the system by covering much of the pedestrianised area. It was always expected that any impact on crime would be localised and in many ways would merely 'displace it'. In Kings Lynn, the first such system, we found that the cameras, linked to the police, can be a significant help in supporting the police. We always knew then that it would not be so successful if the cameras were to over relied on and if they were used to replace or reduce police patrolling. I fear that human nature being what it is that this has happened and hence a reduction in the effectivness of the system.
  
  Since then it has grown to be a much bigger more extensive system than we then envisaged and perhaps it shows that more is not better. Personally I believe that it has grown too much and what we really now need is more police patrols on the street.
  
  Interestingly though, I see that the Council has won the 'Safer Car Parks Award' as was the hope and intention of the original policy....

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