Hyderabad ranked 16th most surveilled city in world

Hyderabad with over three lakh surveillance cameras has been ranked 16th among the top 20 most surveilled cities in the world, according to an annual report published by the UK-based Comparitech, a firm that reviews technology services like VPN, anti-virus and apps.

Interestingly, out of the 20 most surveilled cities, 18 were Chinese cities, with London and Hyderabad being the only cities outside of China to make the top 20. London took the third place and Hyderabad the 16th. Comparitech researchers collated a number of data resources and reports, including government reports, police websites, and news articles, to get some idea of the number of CCTV cameras in use in 150 major cities across the globe, focusing



primarily on public CCTV — cameras used by government entities such as law enforcement.

Hyderabad had 3 lakh CCTV cameras being used to keep tab on a city that has a population of a little over 1 crore. This meant there were 29.99 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people, the report said. The crime index in the city is at 43.46. In a tweet, Director-General of Police M. Mahendar Reddy congratulated all stakeholders and the community for making the city a safe place to live in.

The city of Taiyuan in China was ranked first with 4,65,255 CCTV cameras. Home to 3,891,127 people, the security cameras to population ratio of Taiyuan was at 119.57 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people. The city had a crime index of 51.47.