As I'm sure you have guessed there aren't likely to be 1 million CCTV cameras in London.

The totally flawed "report" that we talked about earlier in this thread estimated (very badly) a figure for the UK of 4.5 million or about 1 camera per 14 people. Anyone who has thought about this "report" for more than a few seconds knows that the figure is not far from just being made up. The figure was made by counting cameras in a busy urban area and multiplying out to the whole country.

Using the 1 in 14 figure, London with a population of 7.5 million would have 0.5 million cameras. And that is from and extremely dubious starting point.

If there really were 1 million cameras that would mean that across Great London (600 sq miles) there would be 1600 cameras per square mile. Given that there are significant areas of Great London that are fields and parks, the actual figure for the populated bits would in fact have to be much higher.

So, does anyone who spends any time in London actually believe that there are 2000+ cameras per square mile ?

And to answer the "are there any areas without cameras", the answer is yes. Most of the residential areas in London don't have any cameras. Given that most of London is residential areas, it makes the 1 million figure look even more ridiculous.

That BBC report says:

"The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers."

I'll bet that the 1 million cameras figure isn't in that police report at all. The journalist has taken the 8 out of 269 bit and added it to a dodgy estimate with the end result that it makes it look like the police have said that London has 1,000,000 CCTV cameras