Big Brother is Watching

Has CCTV turned the UK into a surveillance society? Many argue that it has. CCTV is just a tool, like any other, in the law enforcement armoury, so much depends on in whose hands it is used. In recent years there have been a number of high profile incidents that have raised public concerns. In 2005, CCTV control room operators in Merseyisde used street CCTV to spy into the home of a female resident and film her preparing to take bath - they were found guilty of voyeurism and jailed. A test case in the European Court considered the case of a man who was saved from committing suicide by being spotted on CCTV but who later claimed that his Human Rights had been violated when the local CCTV operator released CCTV images - in which he was identifiable - as part of publicity campaign to demonstrate the value of CCTV. The EU court agreed his Human Rights had been violated. In the UK a number of organisations - including the government's own regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office - have raised concerns about the use of CCTV. There is a dynamic between, on the one hand, the police and intelligence services who wish to have as much freedom to surveil whoever they wish and, on the other civil liberties groups who believe all such intrusions into people's lives should be curtailed. What's the appropriate point between these two extremes that will give the public the maximum protection for the minimum of privacy intrusion? Recent the UK parliament's House of Lords has considered this vexed questions, and has made a number of recommendations intended to curtail CCTV's excesses. These recommendations include that CCTV should only be deployed where its use is 'proportional' - where the activity it is to surveil is of sufficient seriousness to justify the intursion of people's privacy that it will entail; that the use of 'privacy impact assessments' should be considered prior to each new CCTv deployment; and that all CCTV data (including ANPR data) should only be kept for the minimum period defined as necessary within the Operational Requirements. The Home Office and the police have between them produced a National Strategy for CCTV in the UK, which includes the recommendation that, because CCTV necessarily entails privacy intrusion, it should not be everyone who can use it - there should be a licensing/registration/vetting programme for CCTV. However, regardless of all of this, national surveys of the UK public's attitude to CCTV continue to show acceptance levels for the measur e of greater than 80%.