Watchdog says most UK CCTV cameras are illegal

Melanie Reid

We are living in the surveillance age but 90 per cent of Britain’s 14.2 million closed-circuit television cameras may be failing to comply with the law.

A new national advisory body for the industry, CameraWatch, which has the backing of the police and the Information Commissioner’s Office, claimed yesterday that the vast majority of CCTV is used incorrectly and could potentially be inadmissable in court.

The organisation’s chairman, Gordon Ferrie, the international head of security for RBS and a former director of the fraud squad in Strathclyde, said that the dangers were pressing given the growth in the industry.

“Our research shows that up to 90 per cent of CCTV installations fail to comply with the Information Commissioner’s UK CCTV code of practice, and many installations are operated illegally. That has profound implications for the reputation of the CCTV and camera surveillance industry and all concerned with it.”

The proliferation of CCTV by councils, housing associations, businesses, private individuals and police mobile units means that there is estimated to be one camera for every fourteen people. The Home Office has committed £63 million to installing systems.

Mr Ferrie, who said that he had used CCTV footage as a police officer to convict murderers, gave warning that legal counsel “could drive a horse and cart” through most CCTV evidence. That, he said, was not in anybody’s best interests. He said: “We do not want to get into a situation where every image is challenged in court.” CameraWatch, a non-profit-making independent body, maintains that most CCTV cameras in public areas breach the Data Protection Act and, in some cases, the Human Rights Act. The Data Protection Act is breached in several common ways. The most frequent is the failure to keep camera tapes secure. Under the Act, human images should be treated as confidential information in the same way as names, addresses and phone numbers.

The arrival of digital cameras poses yet more problems; for the images can be transferred across open internet connections rather than remaining on a closed loop.

Viewing monitors are often wrongly sited in public areas, so other people can see who is being filmed, and a number of the 3,500 CCTV systems are not registered under the Data Protection Act, as is required.

Additionally, cameras are frequently used for another purpose than the one for which they were registered and the necessary clear signage is regularly missing.

CCTV evidence is now regarded as vital a tool as DNA in the fight against crime. Dozens of convictions are made on evidence from cameras.

Senior police officers in England have expressed fears over the issue of legal compliance although the matter has yet to be tested in a court.

A spokeswoman for the Director of Public Prosecutions said: “If it is part of the evidence then it will be for the defendant to challenge if they felt that in some way the CCTV did not comply with the law.”

Paul McBride, QC, who practises in Scotland, said that the point of non-compliant CCTV evidence had not yet been tested but he doubted that it would lead to a case failing. “I can’t imagine any judge saying such evidence was not admissable when there is the argument that it is in the greater public good,” he said.

Ken Macdonald, the assistant information commissioner (Scotland), speaking at the launch in Edinburgh, said that he welcomed CameraWatch as a positive step to drive up standards of CCTV operation and enforcement.

His organisation, which last November launched a report branding Britain as a surveillance society, with individuals likely to be filmed by 300 cameras every day, is revising its code of practice in compliance with the Data Protection Act.

The Information Commissioner’s Office believes that CCTV is not the answer in all circumstances. It regards the siting of cameras as critical and is concerned about the gathering of “excessive information”.

John Pollock, repesenting the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) at the launch, said that CCTV was of critical importance. It was now part of most inquiries, often provided key evidence and was most likely to secure a guilty plea in murder and serious crime cases.

Non-compliance of evidence, he said, would be only in the criminal’s interests.

Assistant Chief Constable John Neilson, of ACPOS, said that the matter of CCTV data protection compliance was one for the courts. “In Scottish law we have to obtain what they call best evidence and if the best evidence is that we obtain either digital or video images from CCTV then we will seize that,” he said.

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