That's debatable... if they store the footage and are able to produce it upon a law enforcement/court request then Big Brother is still watching, when it matters.
Might be a good opportunity for a real-time image analysis start up, though...
The cameras can't look everywhere, without operators helping to guide where they should be looking there are lots of things they miss, or potentially incriminating evidence they miss.
For example, if a crime is committed but the criminals face isn't seen, it's the camera operators that track them until they run into another camera on the system that has been angled to see their face. A system running on autopilot is going to miss a lot of that.
Might be a good opportunity for a real-time image analysis start up, though...