The concept of the UK "surveillance state" is actually quite overcooked. It's largely based on myth and dramatisation.

BTP probably have a national live feed of railway station cameras. I bloody hope they do, considering it's a rather small, quite centralised police force that covers an enormous rail network, but they are known to have hired "super-recognisers" — skilled CCTV operators — instead.

We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations. (And the most long-term and persistent of those threats was Irish republican terrorism bankrolled by Americans, for that matter)

But British police generally simply don't have a fully-joined up surveillance system.

We are not tracked from door to door by police cameras; the police control relatively few even in London, and none in most towns. I probably cannot walk through the main part of town without passng a council CCTV camera because two of them are used to keep a pedestrianised road safe, but for the most part I don't think I'd pass one at all.

Councils have cameras for various things — parking and traffic enforcement is a nightmare in small old crowded towns — but police don't always have access to these, even.

(They do where I live because there are actually so few police that we — a town of sixty thousand people — nearly ended up without a police station at all.)

There's a network of traffic cameras on motorways and some urban A roads (traffic is a complex problem in the UK) and one assumes the security services have a feed of that and of the railway station cameras. Again: I want them to.

But we simply do not have and never have had a surveillance system even slightly as capable as the USA has apparently begun rolling out with Flock.

Generally speaking I worry that people outside the UK think the surveillance system in "Hot Fuzz" is real. Most of the time if the British police want to see CCTV footage they have to knock on doors and ask, just like anywhere else.

Getting political here a bit, but:

> We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations. (And the most long-term and persistent of those threats was Irish republican terrorism bankrolled by Americans, for that matter)

Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be?

> based on myth and dramatisation

> We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations

I think your take might be based on myth and dramatisation too, as well as a misunderstanding of what the purpose of surveillance is (it's not about protecting children, or trains).

And agree with sibling about Ireland: the Troubles would have been solved by getting the hell out.

I invite you to check how the English government is reacting to independentist movements in Scotland and Ireland post-Brexit if you think they're happy to let people be.

This is a mature and considered take. But I’m sure you’ll agree: incompetence is not a reliable defence.

So what happens when using and optimising these systems becomes a priority for the state?

The apparatus is there, and capabilities can catch up to opportunities it presents.