HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET AWAY WITH EVIL?

It can happen the instant you leave your house.

And then again as you sit at a stoplight.

And yet again as you walk into the grocery store.

If you live in an urban area, or even a suburb, chances are your image is captured dozens of times while you go about your daily routine in public. Surveillance cameras are so ubiquitous now--from traffic cameras to doorbell cams--that it's almost impossible to escape them. But where do all these images go and what happens if they end up in the wrong hands?

Cameras are proliferating, and you may even have one in your hand right now. Cameras are used billions of times a day to snap selfies, take videos, and maybe even record a crime in progress. But it's not just the use of smartphone cameras that has exploded. Every day, surveillances cameras mounted in public spaces are poised to capture images of your face, your car, your license plate. Roughly 770 million surveillance cameras are in use today, and that number is expected to jump to one billion by 2021, according to a market forecast reported by the Wall Street Journal last year.

And it isn't only government agencies collecting images. They have help. Dozens of cities across the country have partnered with private businesses to create surveillance networks. Store owners in shopping centers, for example, might decide to share their feeds with local police, who monitor those feeds in real time. The result is more coverage at a lower cost to police departments, but it can also mean a more pervasive system of surveillance, one in which computer software flags "suspicious" behavior for police to scrutinize.

Being watched by a photograph of staring eyes can be enough encouragement to behave, follow orders or do the right thing, a study has found.

Psychology researchers at Newcastle University hung two different posters at a restaurant, to see how customers would react. They both featured text asking patrons to bin their rubbish, but one had a picture of flowers on it and the other had a pair of staring eyes.

The number of people who paid attention to the sign, and cleaned up after their meal, doubled when confronted with a pair of gazing peepers. The research team, lead by Dr. Melissa Bateson and Dr. Daniel Nettle of the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution found that twice as many customers followed the orders when met with eyes, compared to figures for the flower poster from the day before.

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