[Archive: 12 April 1997]

The government claims that CCTV has "proved enormously successful in increasing public safety", and cites as examples a 13.4 per cent drop in crime in Cardiff city centre and

a high rate of successful prosecutions in Newcastle. The government has spent £22 million helping local authorities to install 4300 cameras and says it will help them install another 5700 by 1999 if it wins the forthcoming General Election. The Labour Party has no plans to change the policy if it wins.

But there are moves in Brussels to restrict the use of CCTV. A European Union directive which must become law in member states by October next year will prohibit criminal convictions based on video evidence alone. And a report for the European Parliament to be released in June, which could lead to further legislation, calls for Europe-wide limits to protect privacy.

The EU directive could undermine the use of CCTV by British police to secure convictions. In Newcastle, 1000 of 1800 people arrested after being caught on CCTV went to trial. Of those, 993 pleaded guilty, and the remainder were convicted. A spokesman for the Northumbrian police says the video evidence was "a prime factor" in obtaining both the confessions and the convictions.

The report for the European Parliament--carried out by the parliament's technology assessment office--says the use of CCTV should be addressed by the MEPs' Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs, because the technology "facilitates mass and routine surveillance of large segments of the population". Automated face or vehicle recognition software allows CCTV images to be digitally matched to pictures in other databases, such as the photographic driver licences now planned in Britain. The unregulated use of such a system would amount to an invasion of privacy, says the report. It recommends that operators should be forced to let only trained staff view images, to erase video tapes as soon as they are no longer strictly needed and to restrict access to the data to prevent digital tampering.

The report also urges the European Commission to make it mandatory for all operators of CCTV to adopt a standard code of practice. Such a code might ensure that images are used only for their stated purpose--to monitor shoplifting in a store, for example, but not to check whether employees are working hard.

The British government asks local authorities to which it gives grants for CCTV to use some form of code of practice. But this is purely voluntary, and Alan Pickstock of the Local Government Information Unit, an umbrella group for local councils which promotes a standard code, says it is not universally adhered to. Indeed, a spokesman for the Home Office admits that CCTV systems vary too much for the government to apply uniform standards.

Diana Sampson, who monitors CCTV use for the London borough of Sutton, says that while such codes can prevent many abuses, they are not enough to protect people's rights. "I know for a fact that one leisure centre has CCTV cameras in its women's changing room, monitored by men, and they can do anything with those tapes."

From New Scientist, 12 April 1997

© Copyright New Scientist, IPC Magazines Limited 1997