Non-human surveillance?

"what are you looking at?"
We have more cameras per head than any other country in the world
1 for every 14 people, that’s 1/5 th of all cameras in the world
more than 80% are such poor quality that they can’t really be useful to the humans charged with policing our society in one way or another.

This fact cropped up in the last 10 minutes of the Today programme (Radio 4, 1 November 2007) and included a fun interview with Ross Clark, author of a new book - The Road to Southend Pier: One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance Society. He has also written a book entitled: How to Label a Goat: The Silly Rules and Regulations That Are Strangling Britain

One interesting idea that emerged in the item was a kind of creative resistance : you can write to the council and ask for your image: you have a right under the Data protection act. This might be an amusing way to draw attention to the nonsense of the camera, and to get people to think about what is going on. However, it is just as likely to end up fuelling a bigger effort to improve the surveillance by making the cameras more effective.

What unintended consequences are there of this kind and level of surveillance?