One of the reasons I like the BBC is that I don't always agree with it. I reckon that a truly unbiased news organisation will upset all shades of opinion from time to time. But the recent two part documentary "CCTV: You Are Being Watched" was so one-sided that it could have been scripted by the CCTV makers.

The trails for the programme suggested a serious look at the pros and cons of CCTV and how the UK came to have 20% of the cameras in the entire world.

What we saw was a two hour advert for the surveillance state. Despite the occasional throw-away line about Big Brother the privacy issues were simply brushed aside. The two programmes were simply filled with examples of the wonders of CCTV and how they had solved crimes and saved life. A brief comment from Shami Chakrabarti was all but drowned out in the sea of talking heads from the police and the CCTV industry.

Most worrying of all was the way the programme practically salivated at the idea of future developments in "smart cameras". This could mean CCTV would be able to predict we were about to commit a crime before we did so.

Department of PreCrime?

Now, I don't disapprove of CCTV completely. It certainly helps in solving crime and has some limited use as a deterrent (although even with one camera per 14 people the UK still has plenty of crime). My problem arises when CCTV is all-pervasive, surreptitious and lacking proper controls. Three attributes of the sort of surveillance this programme was advocating.

If we are to use CCTV in public places (eg streets) and private places open to the public (eg shops) then I think the following are essential:

1. The cameras must be overt rather than hidden
   
2. There must be legally binding rules on what can be done with the recorded footage, eg it must be a criminal offence for it to leave the place it was recorded unless requested by the police.
   
3. There must be a legal limit on how long the footage can be kept. Perhaps 90 days unless the police have requested it in regard to an open investigation
   

Of course nowadays it's about more than simple video footage. With the increase in technology such as face recogniton and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (APNR) such regulations must apply not just to the raw footage but to the data extracted from such footage that records our whereabouts. And these regulations must be legally enforceable, not just a fluffy "code of conduct".

If we must be monitored then that monitoring must be controlled to protect our privacy. The legal assumption should be that information gained through CCTV must not be kept, exchanged or used unless there is an overwhelming justification for doing so.

Privacy should be the norm, not the exception.

CCTV privacy UK politics ukpolitics

Labels: CCTV, privacy