"A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras."

I saw this surreal advert for the "Anti-Terrorist Hotline" operated by the Met police and the British Transport police. It's truly preposterous because it's intended to give the impression that some kind of actual near-miss has occurred, and that lives were saved only thanks to the vigilance of a "shopper".

It's doubly terrible because it was placed in a part of London most visited by innocent tourists: What are they to make of this fear-mongering... that British intelligence is so incompetent that the only way we can keep all of our limbs attached is if we rat on any beardy-man who looks vaguely interested in the landscape? Many foreign-looking people come from places where streets are not adorned with so many government-cameras. It's only natural that these abominations might be regarded with suspicion or curiosity.

It's doubly preposterous because it's intentionally vague: The scene shows an average sort of young family in an average sort of British high-street. It's obviously intended to represent our own neighborhoods, but this vagueness gives it away:

The ad is so short on any details that might allow us to corroborate the event they are describing: Where or when did the shopper shop the CCTV student? Was this person really planning to plant a bomb or did he just look kind of shifty. Is this entire event a hypothetical example of what might happen if shoppers do not report people who look at CCTV cameras.