In London cameras are everywhere, mostly private and they have been for years. Don't think I've seen anything like it in any European city I've visited.

Private cameras pointing to street can be lawful under GDPR, but in that case they are GDPR controller. That then requires them fulfill bunch of obligations which they probably aren't, e.g. giving proper Article 13 notice.

I don't know if it's criminal in any EU country, but it would be something that you could complain to DPA about. Or initiate civil lawsuit against the controller.

Worth noting is that in some cases the camera vendor might also be (joint) controller as they can determine means & purposes of the processing. If they are simply storing the video then it's unlikely, but if they for example use it for AI training that would likely bring them controller territory.

Japan is exporting it's AI-enhanced crime prediction platform across LatAm after successfully deploying it in Tokyo [0]. Japan is doing similar work to analyze financial transactions [1]. South Korea has also deployed a similar surveillance platform called Dejaview [2]. Even Finland has been deploying surveillance camera fusion centers [3]

The brutal reality is everyone is doing this and there's nothing you can do about it. National Security trumps all other concerns (even the GDPR exempts governments who argue their data collection is done for National Security reasons), especially in a world as unstable as today.

[0] - https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2024/06/japans_ai-based_crime...

[1] - https://www.tc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ai1ec_event/10769/

[2] - https://m.blog.naver.com/mtnews_net/223775186368

[3] - https://poliisi.fi/en/camera-surveillance-system