Governments have been doing this for years with RFID tags (e.g. toll), and license plate readers. The data is used extensively by law enforcement in many jurisdictions, and I find it difficult to believe they'll willingly give that up.
Can we really say "targeted surveillance as a service" isn't already a booming business though? Camera feeds and device breadcrumbs from wireless devices incl. iphone & android, watches, headphones, vehicle toll tags, etc. are aggregated from every big name store, street camera, doorbell camera, etc. and processed by handful of companies that aggregate facial and location data for marketing and trend analysis. Police subscribe to these same services to track people, or get access through warrants if subscription isn't an option.
News articles talking about the massive aggregation of data come up every now and then, but I don't think the general public understands it well enough to be angry let alone scared. They may not have a name to a face, but guaranteed if you've been in a public place in the past few years, there's a record somewhere that you were there.
What may be more frightening is that it's untargeted
The UK has cameras on every block that are staffed by a person watching them. I'm not usually a betting man, but I'd bet they're going to toss this job to software one day and every other nation that lags behind them as a surveillance or nanny state will attempt to follow suit.
No we don’t. 80% of the cameras out there in your statistic don’t actually exist. From what remains, 25% are dummies, 25% don’t work, 25% are potato quality and what remains are staffed by people who aren’t even paying attention.
It’s a typical British implementation of surveillance. The only winners are CCTV installers.
"every block" was a bit of hyperbole, but any American would be shocked at this visibility and acceptance of these kind of cameras. You can argue that the quality makes them ineffective right now but that can be iterated on, especially as cost is reduced. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to express a good deal of concern over.
