You'll find few people in the UK who particularly care about CCTV cameras one way or another. Whatever theoretical drawbacks they have, there are few practical issues with them, while there is a measurable reduction in crime rate. And the taking of footage of us in public doesn't qualify as a privacy issue anyway.
Granted I may be wrong in terms of the scope of camera availability. I'd argue that whether this is a privacy issue isn't that clear cut. While a private citizen taking video in public may not be a privacy issue, the collection and storage of video with current technology, facial recognition, etc. is something I would consider a serious privacy issue. The potential for malicious use is too high. Knowing where I am is one things, knowing where I was, how long I was there, how often I was there, etc. is another...
But no one can see much crime-fighting benefit in storing everyone's internet traffic for months, while the drawbacks in terms of ISP costs, which will be passed to the customer, are obvious. And this is a genuine privacy issue, since I consider my emails to my brother or girlfriend to be private in a way that my movements in public are not.
Point taken.
So I'm not sure why you think we don't care about privacy. The UK actually has the strongest existing data privacy laws of any Western country, so far as I am aware. The Data Protection Act was passed in the 80s before the internet and before there was really any need for it. The US has nothing like it. (CCTV gathering is subject to the DPA act, by the way, and people monitoring the feeds have to be licensed.)
Ignorance, difference of opinion, culture, available information . . . Having never been to Britain and having met very few from the U.K. I am left with the reality created by the media I consume as it is colored by personal experience. We must work with the given framework and adjust whenever we find that the structure of our framework doesn't fit our newly perceived reality.