According to a recent AON political risk and terrorism report, 80% of all terrorism incidents in 2017 targeted businesses.
That’s a worrying statistic for both business owners and governments, but one that Geoff Stilwell, CEO and managing director of Beech Underwriting, believes isn’t as relevant in the United Kingdom.
This is, Stilwell says, because of a simple differentiator that the UK has that many European countries do not: surveillance culture.
Do you know exactly how often you are caught on camera when going about your day-to-day life in the UK?
On average, around 70 times. Per day. By one of the 1.85 million CCTV cameras around the UK, 500,000 which are in London alone, and which the government spends approximately £2.2 billion on each year.
It’s a little scary to think about. Mass surveillance has such a long history in the UK, starting during the Second World War, that the public rarely thinks about it anymore.
“Because of the amount of cameras that now populate the country, there probably isn’t very much you can do now where you’re not on camera,” Stilwell explained. “For example, all the cars are photographed going around the M25, the M1.
“They have number plate recognition everywhere, we have number plate recognition on police cars. As you drive in and out of certain parts of London there are cameras there that record every registration number that goes in and out.”
The surveillance is focused a lot on transport, with more than 15,600 CCTV cameras operating on the London Underground Network, plus cameras on every bus or ferry.
“If you commute on a train in London, every time you walk out that station your face is on camera,” Stilwell said. “People don’t realise it. Every time you go on a bus, your face is on camera. They film everybody that goes in and off a bus.”
This surveillance has a lot of consequences, both intended and unintended. What it does mean is that unlike in countries in Europe, where businesses can be targeted specifically, random attacks are more common in the UK according to Stilwell.
“In the UK they’re being a little more random to what they do, and random means that it will be an attack using a knife or a gun, or someone will drive a car at a load of people,” he said. “Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, they don’t have anywhere close to the cameras that we do. Europe just doesn’t have them.”
