Photos: Video cameras keep watch in London

The pervasiveness of the cameras is just one of a number of reasons that the United Kingdom has been identified as an "endemic surveillance society" by U.K.-based Privacy International and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. The two groups late last week released their annual privacy ranking of nations around the world; others in the "endemic" category, among the 47 countries listed, include the U.S., Russia, China, and Malaysia. Other factors include a forthcoming identity scheme expected "to be the most invasive in the world," EPIC and Privacy International wrote, along with "hundreds of thousands of requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for traffic data."