Or happen to be pointing in an inappropriate direction, so miss any crucial action.
Since CCTV seems to be one of the groundhog day subjects on this forum, I decided to see if John Hill's statement about them not being legal around the Ocean Club was correct.
http://www.vda.pt/xms/files/Publicacoes/Artigo_MPC+CNN_Video_surveillance_vs_privacey_(PrivaceyLawBusiness2006).pdf This is a legal newsletter, dated Dec 2006, providing information on legal and illegal use of CCTV in Portugal. It is written in English, it is only 2 pages long, and it is written by 1 associate and 1 senior associate of a Portuguese law firm.
For anyone not bothering to read it, John Hill was right, because the areas around the OC are public, not private, and the law essentially forbids the deployment of CCTV in most public situations.
Perhaps the OC could have applied to deploy CCTV within areas such as the Tapas and Millennium areas. As to whether they would have got it, most such deployment was being rejected by the relevant authority.
Note, the legal briefing specifically covers CCTV in nurseries, basically a no-no.
I dare say we could debate the legality of the CCTV in the Paraíso then, or even the Luz webcams now, but is it worth the effort?
Therefore, the only 'missed' CCTV is that mentioned by Amaral. Unless someone is going to postulate that some twit wandered in and out of Estrela with Madeleine, blithely ignoring the prominent CCTV notices, the one and only bit of information such a camera might have resolved is when the Smiths got back to Estrela.
Smithman did not arise until 26 May 2007. Any suggestion that Amaral's team should before then have gathered that, plus CCTV from several Luz ATMs on the off chance that something might turn up on it is having an off day, IMO.