By contrast, people who believe they are walking anonymously through a crowd could easily be snapped, scanned, matched and profiled within seconds of being spotted. Think of it as The Truman Show for the masses. But for this to happen, observers point out, a huge database would be needed that contains personal information, including photographs, of millions of people. The federal government was off to a good start, before federal privacy commissioner Bruce Phillips revealed in May that the human resources department was maintaining a central database full of information on 33.7 million Canadian citizens - dead or alive. Even on a smaller scale, such as in a casino, privacy advocates warn that taking snapshots of clientele without their knowledge and matching their faces against a database may be crossing the line.
Nobody wants to be watched.
They're in there to gamble, quietly and privately. Drummond of Imagis says the only people who should worry are criminals who are giving society a reason to collect information on them. We don't see this as a threat at all. In Britain, there are over a million cameras in the streets. If you walk in London on any given day over 300 cameras will pick you up.