CCTV hasn't exactly been the panacea that it was made out to be. In fact, councils and private companies have gone ahead with CCTV systems despite the fact that the cost/benefit is dubious at best, and a pretext for reducing staff numbers in a significant number of cases.
tl;dr - Not the end of the world, but not great either, and has paved the way for a number of subsequent surveillance modes.
> There are countless examples of CCTV abuse in the UK
OK, but you've linked to a paper on CCTV operators being bored and ineffective, a list of papers discussing the moral implications, and finally a 16-year-old piece that claims to have substantiated some of the public's concerns.
That feels quite a long way from "countless examples".
Councils routinely abuse powers under RIPA. Such abuses include spying on families the check whether they live in catchment areas for schools; whether they live in an area where they're claiming parking permits; checking whether people are throwing non-recyclables into recycling bins; etc etc.
(That article kind of misses the point of RIPA - councils always did that kind of snooping, but now they're required to work so a standard and are somewhat accountable.)
"spying on families the check whether they live in catchment areas for schools; whether they live in an area where they're claiming parking permits; checking whether people are throwing non-recyclables into recycling bins"
People doing any of those things are absolute assholes and I'm really thankful councils are using CCTV to try to catch them.
That feels quite a long way from "countless examples".