GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND — It used to be that troublemakers could lounge on the planters outside the McDonald's here and pick apart the geraniums to their hearts' content.
A Polish immigrant hamburger salesman might complain -- as if! -- or someone's grandma would tell the offending group of hoodlums to knock it off, if she dared. These days, Big Brother does the job.
The closed-circuit television camera lurking just down the street from the fast-food restaurant bellows menacingly at the first sign of danger to the flora, or a cast-off cigarette butt or fast-food wrapper, for that matter. "Pick it up," commands a booming voice from . . . where, exactly?
The CCTV cameras in Gloucester and several other British towns now come equipped with speakers, meaning Big Brother is not only watching, he's telling you what to do.
"When people hear that, they tend to react. They pick up the litter and put it in the bin," said Mick Matthews, assistant chief police constable in this old cathedral city of 110,000 in the rolling Cotswold hills.
For all the increased anti-terrorism security measures in the U.S., there is probably no society on Earth more watched than Britain.
By some estimates, 4.2 million CCTV cameras, or one for every 15 people, quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, monitor the comings and goings of almost everyone -- an average person is caught on camera up to 300 times a day.
Thanks in part to Britain's long history of terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army, some early, high-profile law enforcement successes helped imprint the potential benefits of closed-circuit television on the popular imagination. With more than $200 million in funding since 1999, CCTV was a fixture in British cities long before attacks by Islamic militants began prompting governments around the world to step up surveillance of their populations.
Cameras are fixed on lampposts and on street corners, above sidewalks, in subways, on buses, in taxis, in stores, over the parking lots, in mobile police vans, and in some cities, even perched in the hats of police officers walking their beats.
Surprisingly clear images of Britons engaged in apparently nefarious activities have become a staple on the evening news; few of the country's many terrorism trials unfold without the jury being presented with multiple images of the defendants purportedly carrying backpack bombs or driving up to a storehouse of explosives.
