CCTV in the dock
OUT-LAW Radio, 27/09/2007
We hear how the cameras that try to catch us misbehaving are
mostly themselves operating illegally.
A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who
for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew
Magee.
Hello and welcome to Out-Law Radio, the weekly podcast that
keeps you up to date on all the twists and turns in the world of
technology law.
Every week we bring you the latest news and in depth features
that help you to make sense of the ever-changing laws that govern
technology today.
My name is Matthew Magee, and this week we ask who guards the
guardians are the CCTV cameras that are designed to keep us in line
themselves breaking the law and how can companies manage to avoid
having to deal with employees surfing eBay for two hours a day.
But first, the news:
- IBM faces virtual picket; and
- GMTV fined two million pounds in phone competition scandal
IBM faces virtual reality's first picket line today at the
Company's offices in online game Second Life. Workers have taken
their industrial relations dispute online and have received
attention and backing from all over the real world.
IBM is a major investor in its presence in Second Life on which,
some reports suggest, it has spent it has spent $10 million.
IBM workers in Italy have been protesting over pay. They had
asked for a salary increase of €, plus improvements to pension and
health rights, according to union representatives at IBM in Italy.
Those representatives said that they then had benefits worth a
thousand Euros a year stripped from them. Christine Revkin of
international union UNI said her members were supporting the
action:
Revkin: We started at 09.00 am London time and
it will finish today at 09.00 pm the idea is that people come into
Second Life and when they reach these IBM locations they will meet
other protestors, participants and will put their banners on and
their flying fish with slogans above their advertised heads. It
just made sense that we tried something original especially in
Second Life where IBM invested so much money and is really building
business there.
Media regulator Ofcom has fined broadcaster GMTV £2 million over
its misconduct in viewer competitions over a four year period. It
is the highest fine ever issued to a broadcaster by Ofcom, which
said that up to 25 million people may have been cheated.
GMTV will have to pay the fine and broadcast the regulator's
findings on three separate occasions.
Ofcom said that the operation of the competitions represented
'gross negligence' and identified three flaws in the operation of
them. It said that competitors were chosen to be finalists up to
three hours before phone lines closed, meaning that many entrants
had no chance to win the competition
That Was This Week's Out-Law News
Barely a day goes by without another apocalyptic warning about
how closely watched we are, how Britain is a surveillance society
and how our basic right to privacy is little more than a
memory.
Britain is littered with CCTV systems; we have more than any
other nation per head of population. They are set to increase
tenfold in number in the next five years, say experts, and are
designed to catch us out in illegal activity.
But could the cameras themselves be illegal? With new
regulations about to take a hold in Scotland we reveal that as many
as 95% of existing cameras are operating outside of the law in the
UK, according to one expert.
Business owners who run CCTV systems must make sure that they
have notified the information commissioner that they are collecting
data about the public, and must comply with the Data Protection Act
in how they use that information.
This says Bernie Brooks of Datpro, a CCTV compliance
consultancy, is where the problems begin.
Brooks: From my own experience, after
personally surveying many, many hundreds of buildings I would say
that probably less than 5% are compliant so in other words 95%, I
would say, are probably non compliant in one way, shape, form or
another within the Act. Obviously that is quite a worrying thing
for numerous reasons. One, if a system is non compliant it could
invalidate the usefulness of the evidence in a court of law which
obviously would be worrying to some people because obviously it is
everybody's expected right to believe the system is fit for the
purpose. Any CCTV system in business, retail, commercial,
industrial whichever, where the system is operated and monitors
what is going on in the work place or outside the work place which
is basically used for property management, shall we say, or for
crime , yes, it does need to notify.
Data protection law is there to ensure that information on us is
not gathered excessively, stored carelessly or used
inappropriately. CCTV operating companies have to be aware of all
its dimensions, says Brooks.
Brooks: There are eight principles to the
Act and of those eight principles, dependent on interpretation that
equates to around about 70 points of law. One of those is
notifications, which is basically where you register with the
office of the Information Commissioner and basically if you have a
CCTV system in, it basically has to be operated within compliancy
of the Data Protection Act.
There is another complication. Few people outside the security
industry know that if you work for a security contractor and
operate a CCTV system you need a licence. In fact, few people in
the security industry seemed to know it when the law was brought in
2006 in England and Wales, causing backlogs and missed
deadlines.
Licences are granted by the security industry authority. SIA
head of investigations Jennifer Pattinson explained why they are
needed at all.
Pattinson: If you operate CCTV equipment
monitoring either public or private space and you are monitoring
members of the public then it is likely that you would need a
Security Industry Authority licence in order to do that. The reason
for licensing is to remove the criminal element from the private
security industry but also to improve levels of training and
professionalism within the industry. There are a large number of
convictions that are mainly related to public order offences
violence, assaults and sexual offences and drug related offences.
They are offences which we consider relevant to the role in which
the individual is deployed.
Licences have been needed in England and Wales since 2006, and
will be needed in Scotland from November 1st of this year. You only
need a licence if you work for a contractor, so small shop owners,
for example, do not need a licence to operate the system. Pattinson
explains why.
Pattinson: The reason being is that the issues
in the security industry have generally been around contracted
security guards. We would take it that an employer who is employing
security directly takes a responsibility for their employees and
does these kinds of checks as part of the recruitment process.
Pattinson is confident that most practitioners now have
licences, though the SIA still acts on tip offs and conducts raids
on operators.
Brooks though is far less optimistic about the practices of the
companies on whose behalf the systems are used. He says our basic
rights as those who are surveyed are rarely considered.
Brooks: If you went in and said look I would
like a couple of images from yesterday because I want to see how I
looked in that coat and you have not given them a specific
time, they can say: well look it takes us ages to review this
and we would just say it is disproportionate effort because you are
not really saying it’s a crime it is just seeing how you looked. So
there are ways somebody could refuse data. They could turn around
and say we refuse you but they have to give the reason why but
there are very few reasons why they can refuse you. So yes, you
could in theory walk in and say I would like a copy of my images
from yesterday and I will tell you now if you went and did that in
75% of the businesses out there, if not 95% of the businesses, I
would bet you they (a) would not know what you are talking about
and (b) would not know how to handle it or they would just say we
only give them as we come across a lot or that only the police are
allowed them , which is rubbish. Basically if someone does not know
how to handle a request it is an offence under the Act.
Brooks even said that the fact that there are two kinds of
licences confuses companies, giving some a false sense of
security.
Brooks: More and more people are getting
trained but intriguingly what we do come across is where people
have been trained, they think that automatically it makes them able
to operate a CCTV system in compliance with the Data Protection Act
and it does not, the system is its own thing.
Three Welsh council workers recently got more than they
bargained for when the hours a day they spent on auction site eBay
resulted in their losing their jobs.
Trade union officials are blaming Neath Port Talbot Council for
not blocking the website and putting temptation in the workers way,
so where does personal responsibility stop and workplace policy
begin, when it comes to the web at work?
Employment expert Ben Doherty of Pinsent Masons the law firm
behind Outlaw explains that, as in all such cases, the devil is in
the detail of an employer's technology usage policy.
Doherty: Every employer who has concern
with internet access and use of e mail should have an internet
user's policy which sets out what the appropriate level of access
is and the times when the employees are allowed to use internet at
work and also the content of the sites that they are allowed to
use.
Doherty says that the more detail goes into your policy, the
better you are protected if you do want to take action against
employees who you think are breaching it.
Doherty: Those that have them are aware of
the reasons for them and therefore aware that the more content
there is and the more descriptive they are in the policy, the
better. The issue that comes out of that is that having the policy
itself is not necessarily enough. Obviously you have to police the
policy and police it in a consistent way.
Neath Port Talbot council said that the employees were spending
up to two hours a day on eBay. This kind of situation raises two
problems for employers, said Doherty, forcing some to take
action.
Doherty: And probably an employers' concern is
two fold, it is an issue of reputational risk if employees are
accessing inappropriate websites with pornographic pictures on them
but also it is a question of the employer is paying the employee to
do a job and does not necessarily want them using personal websites
if you call them that such as eBay such as Amazon during normal
working hours whenever they are being paid to produce something for
the employers benefit.
That's all we have time for this week, thanks for listening.
Why not get in touch with out-law radio? Do you know of a
technology law story? We'd love to hear from you on radio@out-law.com.
Make sure you tune in next week; for now, goodbye.
Out-law radio was produced and presented by Matthew Magee for
international law firm Pinsent Masons.
