Go about your daily business. Visit a bank, the grocery store and a gas station with a convenience store.
It's likely that at least three cameras will capture your image, which is about average for most Tampa Bay residents on a given day, security experts say.
Camera surveillance is one of the fastest growing sectors of the security industry and is expected to peek into even more people's lives in the future.
Just how much cameras can capture was brought home this week through images of the abduction of 11-year-old Carlie J. Brucia of Sarasota. A car wash security camera captured her being led away by a man who authorities now say killed her.
"The videotape has been a key piece of evidence," said Sarasota Sheriff Bill Balkwill. "It has helped us in getting the investigation under way. It helped us get the Amber Alert out. It helped us get our suspect. ... These people (the car wash owners) are true heroes in my eyes."
Video surveillance can now be found in ports, airports, government buildings, schools, buses, subways, stores, banks, highways, warehouses, parking lots, manufacturing plants, day cares, homes and even cars. Cameras have been placed at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, and they are popping up on regular streets all over the world.
In London, the city with more cameras than any other in the world, it is estimated that residents are captured on cameras some 300 times a day, said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit public interest law firm in San Francisco.
While cameras in the United States are largely the purview of private businesses and law enforcement officials, some governments are experimenting with the technology. Ocean City, Md., installed eight security cameras to monitor traffic and crime. In Biloxi, Miss., security cameras record the movements in classrooms in all of the city's public schools. Cameras in Ybor City in Tampa were hooked up to special software designed to spot criminals, but the city ended that experiment last year.
Experts say bigger cities are likely to have more cameras than smaller cities, but overall the trend is toward more cameras everywhere.
"We are a growing community of video surveillance," said Randy Fierbaugh, one of the partners of Premier System Solutions of Palm Harbor, a regional security business that has sold some 3,000 cameras in Florida in the past five years.
The U.S. market for security cameras doubled in the past five years to about $2.4-billion in sales, said J.P. Freeman, a Newtown, Conn., consultant for the security industry.
The main reason, experts say, is that the cost of the systems has come down and the quality of the images has improved. A four-camera system can be purchased for about $3,000, according to security companies. The equipment is digital, so the images are recorded on a hard drive and don't require someone to replace VHS tapes.
This has helped police, who seek out camera footage in their investigations more and more. George Kajtsa, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg Police Department, said it was camera footage at a number of banks that helped police capture Steven Aitken, the man accused of robbing seven banks in Pinellas County.
"The camera allowed us to present it to the public, and then the public recognized his image," Kajtsa said.
But some wonder whether the proliferation of cameras is starting to breach people's right to privacy.
"The prevalence of surveillance cameras leads to more surveillance," Tien said. "And that's one of those things you can do too much of. It can be used to invade people's privacy, and it can have a chilling effect on lots of lawful activities."
- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
