back to article UK surveillance commish asks CCTV operators to please be good

The Surveillance Camera Commissioner has written to local authority chief executives, reminding them of their duty to "pay regard" to the surveillance camera code of practice. Tony Porter, appointed as the first Surveillance Camera Commissioner in March 2014, has circulated a letter reminding those who are responsible for …

  1. CAPS LOCK

    That's some fancy painting with just a roller on a ...

    ... stick.

    1. Ragarath
      Joke

      Re: That's some fancy painting with just a roller on a ...

      Where's your joke icon?

      Looks more like a brush to me. And I want one of them fancy ladders that can telescope to the height needed to write the top letters.

      Also the blending of the paint is rubbish, he needed to get some quality paint so as not to get that blurring effect.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One way to mess them up ..

    .. is to mob the operator with Data Protection Subject Access requests. Any operator that has had to wade through a large pile of requests for images will soon discover that it costs a lot more than the statutory £10 to extract and produce those images, but not doing it in time leads to fines.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One way to mess them up ..

      The surprising thing is how many people don't know the UK legal requirements for a company to register as a data controller and to state the reason for having the cameras. I picked up quite a bit of install info from a UK supplier that does tutorials on youtube but when I asked about data records he thought there was no requirement and never advised his customers to register, I checked with the ICO and they said it abosolutely does need to be done (but not for private use). At home I have some simple cameras and strangely the only people who seem bothered is one lady that used to hang around at the end of the garden "having a fag" while looking over neighbours fences at night oh and the guys who got arrested now and again. I can't see the point in trying to "mess them up" in that many companies have damage done to work vehicles (personal experience) and the footage self wipes never being viewed, the (effective) deterent is just knowing it might be recorded, you are trying to take away a tool of honest people to protect their livelyhood. Maybe others should suggest you have an inland revenue visit every few weeks just to make sure you don't offend anyone by making any tax errors.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quick point

    Someone will no doubt kick off about the amount of CCTV in the UK.

    I'm a cop in Scotland and I feel every street should have a camera. If you disagree, you can tell that to the numerous victims of serious assault / sexual assault / robberies to name a few who were able to have justice thanks to CCTV allowing the suspect to be positively identified. They are a force for good if deployed properly.

    1. Graham Marsden
      Big Brother

      Re: Quick point

      > I feel every street should have a camera [...] They are a force for good if deployed properly.

      Ah, the same argument as the ones that say we should allow all our communications to be tapped and our every movement monitored and our web activity recorded and our e-mails scanned...

      Thank you for being so happy to give up *our* civil liberties to make *your* job easier.

      PS Why didn't you go the whole hog and trot out the "It will protect children" argument too?

      1. Brucifer

        Re: Quick point

        I don’t care if the government have sight of my text or phone calls, inviting friends for dinner or what I got up to at the weekend. The only reason that anyone should have any objection is if the texts or calls are about what store you robbed or who you punched in the face. Nothing that I say or send is anything that I really want to hide. Having something to hide is the only reason to object. If you have nothing bad to hide, who cares if they see it? Even if they look at it, it'll be deemed as boring trivial crap of no consequence or interest.

        1. Haku

          Re: Quick point

          "If you have nothing bad to hide, who cares if they see it?"

          That's so true, innocent people never get locked up, everyone knows that.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Quick point

            Or sentenced to death. My opposition to capital punishment starts at the point where you can't take it back. Doesn't end there but that's enough.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Quick point

              Q: Lee Rigby's killers, does your compassion extend to them? I know mine doesn't. How clear cut do you want guilt to be??

              1. Graham Marsden
                Childcatcher

                @cornz 1 - Re: Quick point

                It's easy to pick an extreme case and say "Look at this, doesn't this justify what they want to do?!" (see icon for details!) but it's not the black-and-white extreme cases that are the problem, it's all the shades of grey which are in between.

                Once that sort of thing gets in place, it's so much easier for function creep to extend laws to places it was never (supposedly) intended to be, for example Anti-terrorism legislation being used to convict anyone who won't hand over their passwords...

              2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

                Re: Quick point

                Capital punishment and mutilation have no place in a civilized society. More ambivalent about corporal punishment.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Re: Quick point

          Sorry, the "nothing to hide" line of defense for unlimited monitoring is a demonstrable failure given evidence of the malicious use of monitoring and/or "informants" here in the US and that's just the Federal government. It's worse in the states but unless you are an information hound, you'll not see it rise to national attention.

          Just for reference, as I've posted elsewhere, I live with this regimen, have been since I was seventeen. My background check went all the way back to where I was kept in the hospital nursery and anyone in local to the Federal government has access to my records no matter where kept. I can live with it, not much choice really. All it takes is one malicious actor who either intentionally plants evidence of some crime, has decided to misconstrue my activities, or possibly worse, knows my network of contacts to three levels deep and goes off the deep end about my friends, friend of friends, ..... Having belonged to Greenpeace (I'm certain someone got a good chuckle about that!), a known terrorist group to the FBI, and a connection to a royal family member over in the Mid-East, whose relatives have been funding terrorism, well it's not a stretch at all.

          BTW, theoretically the security organizations hands are a bit tied. Actuality is quite a bit different. We even have parallel construction for those times they really want to get you. Even the local police forces use that as taught to them by the FBI. UK is worse in legal framework but as we've documented time and again, the Bill of Rights is made of tissue paper.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Quick point

              If surveillance generates good paying jobs and results in pension funds increasing in value, it cannot possibly be a bad idea.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Quick point

                OP jumping back in.

                Quickly skimmed some comments:

                It doesn't matter how many police you have on the streets. Crime will happen. There will be victims. Often the only source of evidence available is CCTV (Yes, CCTV has been accepted in court on numerous occasions for sufficiency - in Scotland you need two witnesses to an offence if there is no admission - CCTV is accepted as the second witness) and more frustratingly, often the -only- possible source of evidence would have been CCTV had there been any.

                Unless you have a cop on every street corner, which the taxpayer would never stand for (because the gubberment isn't going to make cuts elsewhere to fund that project), you simply couldn't stop outdoor crime.

                For the guy that made the comment about putting cameras indoors to catch domestic abuse, that's just a stupid comment made by someone with no strong argument against it. Well done.

                Ultimately, and here's the gib - if controlled properly, with the appropriate systems in place, there quite simply is nothing wrong with having CCTV on every street corner. It's an acknowledge fact that if you live in a big city you get caught on dozens of cameras every day, but a fair few are not suitable for evidence in court, so if you do get a punch to the face, then that crappy system in the local kebab shop isn't going to help you anyway and I've dealt with victims of crime who expressed anguish NOT that the police weren't there to prevent it, but that there wasn't CCTV available to catch it happening and identify the perpetrator.

                I'd love to have 50 cops on my shift every day. We'd do a power of good and really stick it into the skulls operating in our area. As it is, I run with about maybe 8 covering a huge area of a major city.

                Besides, CCTV can provide conclusive evidence that a crime has happened. Everything else is based on witness statements or other productions of evidence. These can, for the most part, all be argued away. a Defence solicitor will fucking destroy a victim in the witness box to make them break and fuck up their story.

                Can't do that with a video.

                So rant all you like about privacy, then lets discuss it again when you're a victim of crime and CCTV would have got you justice. It's a different story from the victims, that's for sure.

        3. Cynic_999

          Re: Quick point

          "

          Nothing that I say or send is anything that I really want to hide.

          "

          Even if your life is so featureless and boring that there is nothing you do or say that you would want to keep private, please acknowledge that many other people live far different (but completely law-abiding) lives. Personally, I do not want strangers listening to or reading every exchange between my S.O. and myself - and that's not because anything discussed is against the law.

          In addition, it is well within the realm of possibility that our government may criminalise or regard as suspicious or undesirable some activity or other than is perfectly acceptable today.

    2. Elmer Phud

      Re: Quick point

      "I'm a cop in Scotland"

      Do you not think that without a drastic slashing of number of cops then maybe we might not need so many cameras?

      Also, there is the small question of cheap booze and 'happy' hours . . .

      You are merely regarding trying to handle the consequences of poor government, which does nothing to deal with the initial problems.

      (I realise that for many years the police have been objecting to severe cuts and that any police union is not supposed to strike -- you are just being given a shovel and told to move the shit from A to B)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Quick point

      Shall we have one in every house then to witness the domestic violence that happens everyday but is not reported???

      Starting with yours????

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Quick point

      I'm a cop in Scotland and I feel every street should have a camera

      I can see where you're coming from, but as far as I've been informed, victims very much prefer not to become victims first.

      Cameras do absolutely nothing to prevent crime, as proven by numerous studies, at best they help with clearing up a crime. Personally, I prefer not to become a statistic to start with and as far as I can tell, most rape victims and those drive to A&E with stab wounds tend to agree with the whole idea of preventing being better than getting someone convicted later. The problem that is you only focus on clear up rates.

      That also explains another problem I have come across: blackmail via underage imagery. The process is: some perp installs dodgy images (typically CP) on a system, smartphone or photo stream of a person they don't like or seek to blackmail, and in the end the police gets called in. Because the law gives you a tick in the box to find a person possessing those images, that's where the investigation typically stops - you have someone you can haul into court, irrespective of how this situation came to be. Because the investigation stops right there, the actual perp who has such images is left to do it all again - but you don't care. You have your statistics. You are thus not preventing crime, only solving it and get a victim convicted instead of the perpetrator, but hey, who cares? The statistics look positively wonderful!

      So yes, I can see why you like CCTV, you can do that work over a pizza sitting at your desk and look good without any risk. Potential victims would prefer you'd actually be out on the street more.

    5. Vic

      Re: Quick point

      I'm a cop in Scotland and I feel every street should have a camera

      So you want to be able to spy on us - but you're not even going to tell us who you are?

      Yeah, that's equitable.

      Vic.

    6. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: Quick point

      Serious question.

      Has a CCTV video ever been accepted as primary evidence in a court? I know criminals will confess when they see a video, knowing it was them because they were there. It may also be useful to demonstrate the viciousness of an attack. But, has CCTV ever been accepted and overturned an otherwise solid alibi?

      1. Woodnag

        Good question

        About 20 years ago, I had similar conversation with the top dog at a small UK company who built security cameras/recorders. He said that no compression was allowed if the recording was be entered as evidence to court. So analogue cameras, feeding VCRs. But if the suspect confesses, no need to present the recording.

    7. nilfs2

      Re: Quick point

      Prevention is far more effective, instead of spending lots of money on CCTV and/or cop on every block, why not take that same money and put it on planned parenthood programs, teaching the parents how not to raise a criminal, educating the kids effectively about drug abuse, teaching them how it is possible to have a good living working to make your own money instead of taking someone else's at gun point, ...

  4. Graham Marsden
    Boffin

    "lets discuss it again when you're a victim of crime and CCTV would have got you justice."

    So you can prove that someone being caught committing a crime on CCTV *will* ensure that we get "justice"?

    No, didn't think so...

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