50,000 CCTV cameras in Hong Kong's skies causing 'intrusion' into private lives

CCTV surveillance cameras have become such a common feature of Hong Kong that you barely notice them. But rest assured, they notice you.

The privacy watchdog says the "increasingly widespread" use of closed-circuit television creates an "inevitable intrusion into the privacy of individuals".

To test its concerns, the Sunday Morning Post took a trip from Causeway Bay to Chek Lap Kok airport to find out just how much being watched has become a part of everyday life in one of the busiest cities in the world.

The Post counted at least 100 cameras during the 80-minute trip, which involved visiting street-level shops and shopping malls and using several types of transport.

Professor Andrew Adams, an information ethics expert at Meiji University in Tokyo, arrived at the same number in a similar study over the course of a day in the Japanese capital. Since 2005, Adams has studied the social and ethical implications of CCTVs.

There was limited research on any direct links between a high saturation of CCTVs and a low crime rate, he said, but this did not stop people from using surveillance cameras as a blanket solution.