Home Office to grab for more CCTV power

Story link: Home Office to grab for more CCTV power by Brian Turner

The police and Home Office are recommending the introduction of regulations, making it mandatory for all 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain to be upgraded. This is so they can be deputised to gather police evidence and provide a vehicle for emerging technologies that will automatically identify people and detect any suspicious behaviour.

The CCTV strategy for crime reduction, which will be published in December after a joint review by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, is also expected to criticise the management of the law governing the use of CCTV by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Mr Graeme Gerrard, joint-director of the review and deputy chief constable at Cheshire Constabulary, is recommending that powers of inspection should be introduced allowing the police to inspect CCTV systems to asses if they are good enough for their recordings to be commandeered for use as police evidence. Public and private operators would be obliged to upgrade their systems if they were not of a high enough standard.

It is the responsibility of the Information Commissioner to ensure that CCTV systems are fit for purpose to comply with the Data Protection Act, but according to Mr Gerrard, this duty is not being carried out.

Although the ICO has asked the Department of Constitutional Affairs for powers of inspection, its requests have been turned down. The ICO applied for the powers, not purely to check that CCTV systems are adequate for crime detection, but also to ensure that they are not intruding on people’s privacy.

If the ICO was to be granted the necessary powers, it would not have adequate funding to carry them out. Neither is the government willing to fund the upgrading. The CCTV review will therefore suggest the introduction of a self-funding regime.

The review is also expected to call for a public debate on CCTV.