The issue: Security is more important than privacy during a riot

London has perhaps the highest concentration of security surveillance cameras in the world — 12,000 in the subway alone and 7,000 government cameras above ground, and that’s in addition to private closed-circuit TV cameras. The shorthand for those systems is CCTV, and they are not without controversy because of their perceived intrusiveness.

BECAUSE OF THOSE CAMERAS, the three days of rioting in major British cities is surely the most photographed outbreak of civic mayhem ever. Police are now using footage from the surveillance cameras to track down looters and violent rioters.

Perhaps because the cameras are so ubiquitous, many of the rioters seemed to forget they were there. Others took elementary precautions.

But Martin Lazell, chairman of the Public CCTV Managers Association, told the Christian Science Monitor: “A lot of these youths are wearing scarves to hide their faces, but we’re not just reliant on that. We can identify people on how they walk, their height, their clothes, shoes — all manner of things. People recognize people by what they wear, and often, despite having full wardrobes, we tend to wear the same clothes most of the time.”

The police are also counting on the public to report — “to shop,” in the common phrase — anyone they recognize. In this effort, they have the support of Britain’s robust, often-rambunctious press.

The Sun ran a rogues’ gallery of wanted rioters with the headline, “Shop Another Moron. Help Police Catch More Riot Yobs.”

The Evening Standard urged Londoners to respond to a “CCTV hunt for suspect who left community hero in coma.”

The Mirror ran galleries of photos from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, each time asking, “Can you identify these people?”

IN CONTRAST TO the usual aftermath of civil disturbances, where there is hand-wringing over root socioeconomic causes, social alienation, scant job opportunities, racism and other failings of the larger society — all these factors are in play, to be sure — the British public seems to have settled on greed, alcohol and a yen for violence as the cause.

If this “name and shame” campaign proves at all effective, it will go a long way in Britain to tipping the debate in favor of security over privacy.

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