Who watches the watchers in surveillance society?

I saw this on Reuters. It is a fairly in depth article on the trend of ever increasing video surveillance just about anywhere you go in major cities. The didn't mention any specifically but there are also some lesser cities where this is becoming commonplace as well.

I am a bit torn on this issue. On the one hand I can see a lot of potential for abuse and privacy and civil liberties getting flushed down the toilet. At the same time, I can see the necessity in some places as protection for citizens or property. I find it a bit distressing how many cameras are in place in some of these cities. Especially since they haven't been shown to prevent crime, only move it around. Theoretically, if there were enough of them to essentially cover all public areas that might mitigate the crime to a degree. The problem is with that many cameras, you would need a whole police force of people to make an reasonable attempt at monitoring them. They do discuss the intelligent analysis software that cuts out the person monitoring the video. If it actually worked that might be a good thing, since there is less privacy issue then. On the other hand, there are currently plenty of false positives that might raise suspicion where none is warranted. I don't think this is the last we will hear of this issue or the concerns being raised here.

Also posted on Concerned Citizens.