[TheBurningOr]

Genuine question here. How is the right to privacy circumvented to allow for the CCTV cameras and other policies that seem, to me at least, to be a pretty clear invasion of privacy. Seems to me this policy is more about allowing aristocrats, celebrities and the wealthy to squash stories they don't want published about them.

[ColinWright]

I think the argument is that what you do in public places is public knowledge. If random people legally positioned can see you, then there is no assumption of privacy.

I speak from a position of no formal knowledge, merely having derived a working model that seems mostly to predict accurately various things. It's a working theory, not based on actual law. It's also probably got flaws, but I don't really care - I provide this working model merely as a starting point.

And regarding the rich being able to circumvent the law, it was ever thus. These days you need vast amounts of money to get into power, and once there, it's unlikely the laws will make life difficult for the rich and powerful.

[rcxdude]

CCTV cameras aren't as large a privacy breach as having something about you published in a paper, since on a CCTV the number of viewers is usually zero or one, and they usually have no interest in you beyond your presence at the location of the CCTV camera at a certain point in time. In fact, I suspect that CCTV footage of, say, someone entering an adult store would fall under the privacy law and would not be legally re-distributable beyond the owner of the store (this is pure speculation though, but it does at least provide an example of how the two apparently conflicting policies could be resolved).