UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign - News

• The Independent newspaper (Tuesday 12th January 2004) has devoted its headline and leading articles to CCTV Surveillance, claiming that over 4,285,000 i.e. about 20% of the world's CCTV cameras are used in the UK. The article seems to confirm everything we have been saying in this campaign for CCTV Regulation for several years.
• CCTV does not have a deterrent effect on violent alcohol influenced street brawls according to research conducted by University Hospital of Cardiff, published in Injury Prevention journal which compares actual emergency hospital admissions with unreliable police violence statistics.
• The Sexual Offences Act 2003, became law on 20th November 2003, establishing the new offence of Voyeurism, with up to two years in jail and the Sex Offenders Register as punishments. This could be used to counter some of the most egregious abuses of CCTV surveillance and papparazzi tabloids, and voyeurs with camera equipped mobile phones, but, there seem to be substantial loopholes which will allow pornographers, stalkers and papparazzi to avoid prosecution.
• It looks as if the London JamCams are being censored again, during President Bush's visit. e.g. Whitehall/Parliament Square It is precisely when temporary road closures etc. are in operation that these low resolution pictures are most useful for steering people away from the affected areas. There is no security issue with low quality, non realtime pictures, which are delayed for several seconds or minutes. The secrecy surrounding the excuse "not available for operational reasons" shows contempt for the public - we can snoop on you when we want, but we will not share the publically funded data.
• If the new intrusive Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Cameras, which can "see under your clothes" are deployed at airports, will they fall foul of "child porn" laws ? Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police seems to have already held secret mass surveillance trials of the technology, with no public information on the possible health effects or of the unauthorised intrusive mass surveillance aspects under RIPA.
• Does anyone fancy contributing to the mySociety inspired UK CCTV Mapping Project ?
• The Police plan to use CCTV surveillance cameras to protect Gatso traffic speed trap cameras, according to the Sunday Times of 12th October 2003. Most people will be astonished at the alleged cost of each speed camera ranging from �30,000 to �60,000 each.
• Privacy International and EPIC have published their comprehensive Privacy and Human Rights Survey 2003 on technological threats and with individual country summaries, all with lots of references for researchers and students.
• Requred reading for any students studying CCTV surveillance is the 'Foucault and Panopticism Revisited' issue 3 of the Surveillance & Society online journal. This site has plenty of academic links, without which your thesis or essay is incomplete.
• London Tube stations at Mile End and Liverpool Street are testing Suspicious Behavior computer systems linked to their CCTV control rooms, using secret criteria. Where are the published rules about what constitutes "suspicious behavior" in a public place ? Why is exiting from an escalator in one particular direction rather than another considered to be suspicious by the IPSOTEK Cromatica software ?
• How long before the US Military research into the "Big Brother" linking of thousands of CCTV and ANPR surveillance devices Combat Zones That See (.pdf) bears fruit and moves from tracking and targetting people and vehicles in Military Operations in Urban Terrain to the streets of our towns and cities ? How will you know if your local CCTV scheme has been upgraded with this kind of backend software ?
• Neither the presence of CCTV , nor that of voyeurs with Multimedia Messaging Service camera phones, seems to have had any deterrent effect on this alleged rape in Brighton.
• Many CCTV systems have built in audio recording, but even without this, there is no guarantee that your conversations cannot be monitored by Lip Reading Facial Recognition software being released for free by Intel.
• According to New Scientist magazine, Nokia's Observation Camera with motion detection, infra red vision and GSM SMS and GPRS MMS capability for under �300 targets the Home Security and Remote Snooping markets, but raises Privacy and Data Protection worries.
• European Court of Human Rights judgement on the Geoff Peck case. The ECHR has found in favour of Geoff Peck, who, with the help of Liberty complained about the widespread media abuse of the Brentwood council CCTV footage apparently showing him as a criminal being caught by the police in a telephone booth, when in fact it was a suicide attempt, and no crime was committed. Nobody bothered to try to get his permission to show the unpixellated video footage on national TV or in the press, which caused him and his family considerable stress when it was shown months later whilst he was recovering from depression. There is still a need for a proper Law of Privacy in the UK, the various media and council and police voluntary codes of conduct mentioned in theis judgement simply do not work properly or fairly throughout the country.
• Mr Justice Lindsay's ruling in the Catherine Zeta-Jones/Michael Douglas/Hello Magazine/OK! Magazine wedding photos case confirms that in the UK "there is no law of privacy" and that "So broad is the subject of privacy and such are the ramifications of any free-standing law in the area that the subject is better left to parliament." and "A judge should therefore be chary of doing that which is better done by parliament." It is a sad day when "commercial confidence" is rated more highly by the British legal system than the fundamental human right of privacy. We need a Privacy Law, not just for the financial benefit of rich media celebrities, but for all of us.
• The results from the Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2002 seem to show (please let us know if we are misreading the statistics) that even the very best systems can hardly manage a criminal or terrorist "watch list" of only 25 "suspects" and that the current technology has no hope at all of coping with even hundreds of suspects without producing an enourmous number of "false positives", even from a database of above average quality images. Interestingly there seems to be no difference in accuracy between searching a database of stills as opposed to one of video clips.
• Censorship of London's Traffic WebCams ?. It seems that yet again, the public service images posted on the web from BBC/Transport for London JamCams are unavailable for operational reasons when they might show large crowds of people or police. This was noticable during the May Day Monoloply demos and now both recent large anti-war marches.
• VIPER the new �7.6 million national ID parade video database has been opened in Wakefield, Yorkshire. The technology promises cheaper and less stressful ID parades, and it seems to be in use for analysing CCTV images. What are the criteria for removal of a suspects video image from the database, or are you branded as a "suspect" for life, like with the DNA database ?
• Only 10% of CCTV systems seem be compliant with the Data Protection Act according to a survey of 400 sites by Insight Data Protection The situation has therefore improved slightly since June 2000, when there were less than 50 CCTV or Video Surveillance systems registered under the Data Protection Act.
• We have privacy concerns about the London Congestion Charge CCTV scheme regarding the massive centralised use of CCTV and ANPR technology.
• The Scottish Executive is upgrading 23 CCTV schemes at a cost to the taxpayer of �2.5 million. Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology seems to be on the increase in Scotland as well as elsewhere.
• The seemingly random murder of a 19 year old girl Marsha McDonnell in south west London minutes after leaving a bus has prompted the police to release CCTV footage from the multiple cameras now onboard many buses. Is it right to publish photos and to broadcast video clips, from 2 different buses, of 7 young men who could not possibly have been involved in the murder, and who are extremely unlikely to have witnessed anything suspicious ? The hue and cry of CCTV footage broacast on television has usually been confined to pictures of likely criminals, but now, it seems, that anybody inadvertantly in the vicinity of a major crime is being treated as if they were a criminal suspect, with no regard to their privacy.
• The Observer reports that the London Congestion Charging cameras are to have Facial recognition software to scan drivers faces against a database of terrorist suspects, developed in secret by MI5, Special Branch and the Metroplitan Police. The consequences of a "false positive" match for an individual could literally be lethal. The Congestion Charging scheme is already being challenged legally for the lack of consultation - there has been no mention of this secret police project by the Mayor of London. Why is there no financial contribution to the scheme from policing budgets ?
• For those of you who believe in the crime deterrent value of CCTV surveillance, the Existech wearable CCTV camera domes should make you feel safer.
• The Home Office now seems to be pushing Iris & Facial recognition technology for the mandatory national ID/"Entitlement" smart card. Have they not noticed that both of these biometric identifiers can be easily stolen by even simple web or CCTV surveillance cameras ? How are they planning to sort out the problem of denial of service attacks when two sets of identical biometric identifiers are presented to say the passport systems - the tendancy will be to suspend both sets of credentials for a period until the apparent error or fraud is sorted out.
• World Sousveillance Day is on Christmas Eve, 24th December. People around the world will be "shooting back" at CCTV surveillance cameras, with their own cameras, or just with things that could be cameras, to provoke debate on the privacy issues.
• Hidden away in the depths of the Home Offices's proposed Sexual Offences Bill is the new offence of Voyeurism, with up to two years in jail and the Sex Offenders Register as punishments, which could be used to counter some of the most egregious abuses of CCTV surveillance. "We would want cases where a photographer takes indecent photographs of someone without their consent and for example posts them on the Internet or in a pornographic magazine to be treated particularly seriously by the courts."
• The Home Office is spending more money on "Project Laser" trials of Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology by 9 police forces, including links to CCTV surveillance schemes. What is there to prevent this from evolving from targetted checks on suspicious vehicles, to indiscriminate tracking of every vehicle which passes ANPR systems, with the movement logfiles of the vast majority of innocent road users being stored for future use ?
• Transport for London have caused controversy with their totalitarian propaganda poster campaign "Secure beneath the watchful eyes", extolling the unproven virtues of CCTV surveillance on the buses. What next "Strength through Joy" or "Arbeit macht frei" ?
• CELLDAR currently under development for the military as a way of detecting stealth aircraft, submarines etc by modifying the existing GSM Mobile Phone Transmitters is probably a good idea , if it ever works. Unfortunately, even before this military technology has been developed properely, it is being touted as a "replacement for expensive CCTV cameras" and it could be yet another intrusive mass surveillance system capable of tracking civilian people and vehicles. Will Mobile Phone companies start issuing speeding fines ?

  In future military conflicts, no longer will just the key telephone exchanges be target for bombs and missiles, but each and every Mobile Phone Transmitter will have to be destroyed in the first wave of even a so called precision airstrike, in order to protect following stealth bomber/fighter attacks. Worries by parents about the siting of Mobile Phone Transmitters near schools on electromagnetic radiation health grounds could be replaced by the fear of "collateral damage" from bombs and missiles.

• YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHED.... is a one day film location shoot using the CCTV cameras and control room on an East London estate. This could be your oppourtinity to see CCTV in action from both sides of the lens.

• Newport in Gwent is spending �500,000 of Home Office grant on CCTV via the Internet, which could actually put the infants and junior school children at *more* risk than before through its "cost saving" use of the insecure internet. Are there appropriate security and encryption mechanisms in place to protect this extremely sensitive data from prying eyes ? Are all of the Cable & Wireless people with access to these systems cleared with the Criminal records Bureau. like other teachers etc who work with children ?

• The Home Office has now published "Home Office Research Study 252 Crime prevention effects of closed circuit television: a systematic review" which is a meta-study review of all the available research into the effectiveness of public CCTV surveillance.

  "Overall, the best current evidence suggests that CCTV reduces crime to a small degree. CCTV is most effective in reducing vehicle crime in car parks, but it had little or no effect on crime in public transport and city centre settings."

  Given that this major study by their own scientists shows that there is no compelling public safety benefit, surely it is now time for the Home Office to redress the lack of protection for individual privacy rights by regulating public CCTV surveillance on an equitable legal basis throughout the country ?

• The NACRO report which points to as yet unpublished Home Office research, claims that the �170 million being spent on CCTV Surveillance might perhaps be more effectively spent on better street lighting which seems to yield a 20% reduction in street crime compared with the temporary (once the novelty has worn off) 5% reduction achieved by most CCTV schemes. 30% of the study sample achieved no reduction in street crime at all.
• The new Manchester City Centre CCTV system opened officially in time for the Commonwealth Games. The big screens and 24 hour x 92 days of online digital storage capacity for over 400 cameras should be useful crime fighting tool, which Lord "The Dome" Falconer can be proud of. For �3 million of public money so it should be ! However, to cynical observers of CCTV Surveillance like us, there seem to be far too few human beings involved in monitoring the 400 spy cameras - a mugging/murder could easily pass unnoticed whilst the operator is "channel surfing" through 50 or more camera views.
• We have always expressed doubts about the London Borough of Newham's Visionics FaceIt face recognition system which seems to have never successfully picked out *any* of the wanted suspects on the target database, and has produced many false positives, according to this article by the in the Guardian
• Despite producing a huge number of false positives at one US airport trial, Visionics Face Recognition (as used in the London Borough of Newham) is being used to look for terrorist suspects at the New York Statue of Liberty. Either the constant "crying wolf" will result in real terrorists getting through, or there will be harrassment and "accidental" shootings of "false positives".
• Facial Recognition has now spread to the 42 camera system covering 8 town centres in Tameside, Manchester.
• The kidnap of the newborn twin baby at Wordsley Hospital in the West Midlands, is yet another high profile public CCTV surveillance system failure, which neither deterred the kidnappers, nor was able to provide a clue to their identity, let alone evidence which could stand up in court.
• May Day 2002 protests in London are being policed with the help of public CCTV, c.f. the BBC JamCams for a small glimpse of what is available to Scotland Yard, which is is fair enough, but there seems to be an increased use of "in your face" video taping of people who have not committed any offences, simply to intimidate them.
• The Watchers BBC Radio 3, Sunday 21st April 2002, 22:15-23:00 features some voice soundbites contributed by supporters of Watching Them, Watching Us.
• No figures available to support the usefulness of CCTV Facial Recognition - article in The Independent, 1st April 2002
• Evidence of crime displacement by a CCTV scheme on Londonderry ? - article in The Independent, 6th March 2002
• The Mayor of London has approved the controversial London Congestion Charging scheme

  "The number plates of vehicles entering or moving within the central zone would be observed by a network of fixed and mobile cameras. There would be no toll booths, gantries or barriers; drivers would not have to stop. The number plates collected by the cameras would then be checked against the registration numbers of those who have paid."

  There are *still* no published proposals on a Data Privacy Policy for this "Big Ken is Watching You" surveillance system of according to this Evening Standard article, 700 new cameras and a central database of registered vehicles, drivers names, addresses, credit card details etc.

• 2002 UK Big Brother Awards are being held at the London School of Economics on March 4th
• This Wired article discusses Video Forensics. There are several high tech tools available to enhance poor quality CCTV images - but where are the rules governing what is admissable and how do you detect digital image forgeries ?
• Would you like an interactive route planner which steers you past the minimum number of CCTV cameras ? They have this one in New York called Isee. However useful such a database is, even to the police, keeping it up to date is impossible without proper CCTV Regulation.
• The Home Office has missed yet another opportunity to regulate public or private Closed Circuit TeleVision surveillance systems, which are again excluded from the new Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill, as they were from the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
• 7th September International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance saw several stret theatre type protest in front of CCTV surveillance cameras, including the Fanclub performance in Nottingham Perhaps they should now demand copies of their copyright performances from the operators under the Data Protection Act ?
• The Home Office have announced another �79 million funding for public CCTV schemes How can the Minister John Denham approve the funding for Round 2 and make statements like "CCTV has repeatedly proved its effectiveness in the fight against crime and the fear of crime." when the cost/benefit analysis of the Round 1 schemes of the CCTV Initiative, designed to test this hypothesis CCTV Initiative Minimum Evaluation Standards For Independently-Evaluated Schemes Annex E has not been completed or published ?
• World Subjectrights Day is announced, a day of action again to be held on Christmas Eve, where you can "watch the watchers" and photgraph them for a change.
• Liberty have held a confernce this summer 2001, on the topic of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They are now calling for a proper Privacy Bill, which will also cover the abuse of CCTV Surveillance.
• What are the chances of being arrested for withdrawing your own money from a bank ATM machine ? Not impossible when CCTV surveillance camera footage is released to populist Television crime entertainment shows as reported in The Register.
• In a series of advertisments on local radio stations the Metropolitan Police Anti-terrorist Unit is appealing to CCTV surveillance systems operators to get their CCTV cameras maintained and to use fresh tapes and to keep them for at least a month, in anticipation of terrorist and street protests/riots in the run up to the general election - what does this say about the routine effectiveness and monitoring of such surveillance systems ?

• When you want CCTV to work properly, it often does not: The Sunday Times reports that Grubby BBC security cameras help bombers evade arrest "The BBC has been criticised by anti-terrorist police for security lapses that have helped the men who bombed its television headquarters evade arrest.

  Police sources have revealed that the CCTV cameras at Television Centre had not been cleaned for weeks and were recording images on videotape that had been used several times. Video footage of the bombers' faces was unrecognisable"

• According to Punch Magazine Issue 126 Mar 14th 2001 the Police National Computer database is not registered under the Data Protection Act, which is illegal, and contains a huge number of incorrect database entries, which is a scandal. c.f. text of the article Check the Data Protection Register to see if PITO ever bother to register the PNC

• The Home Office seems to be intent on massively expanding the use of Open Circuit Television (OCTV) which will be boosted even more with �3d Generation Mobile Phone technology as it becomes available - all without any statutory regulation.

• The Mark Thomas Comedy Product TV show is offering a �500 prize for the best video obtained from public CCTV systems through a Data Protection Act application. Such accesses can cost the CCTV operators several hundred pounds, but they can usually only charge you around �10. email [email protected]

• Another �22 million funding to improve security in schools including more CCTV surveillance has been announced (�22 million was also spent in each of the previous two financial years as well). There are still no statutory controls to regulate who has access to CCTV pictures of school children, the siting of cameras to cover outside the school gates or intrusive surveillance of the toilets etc. We suspect that CCTV surveillance would not have prevented the December 1995 murder of head teacher Philip Lawrence or the March 1996 Dunblane mass murder of schoolchildren, even though these incidents are usually mentioned in media coverage of CCTV in schools.

• Could the celebrity wedding photos judgement involving film stars Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, Hello and OK magazines actually set the first legal precedent acknowledging a right to privacy in the UK ?

• Professor Jason Ditton, of Scottish Centre for Criminology, one of the few leading criminologists to have actually conducted scientific studies into the effects and cost/benefits of Public CCTV Surveillance schemes was one of the winners of a "Winston" at this year's Big Brother Awards

• The Police Authority for Northern Ireland announced (16/10/2000) �1.6 million through its CCTV Town Centre Challenge Competition to help install 84 CCTV surveillance cameras in 12 towns.

  Interestingly, there is no mention of any anti-terrorism capabilities in the press release, only that the camera schemes "are designed to deter crimes such as vandalism, theft, and nuisance behaviour", Are they missing the point in towns on the list such as Omagh or Derry ? If the police in Northern Ireland don't think that CCTV cameras will deter terrorists, why should anybody else ?

• Another year, another Big Brother Award for Jack Straw and the Home Office ? Or should the "Big Brother" voyeur TV shows we awarded for their "popularisation" of voyeur cameras ? The 3rd Annual Big Brother Awards are to be held 4th December 2000 at the London School of Economics.

• Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London seems to have plans for a road congestion pricing scheme, using CCTV number plate recognition technology. He seems to be keen to hand over vehicle tracking data to the police, but in the Mayor's plans for congestion charging he does not seem to have even considered any safeguards against the abuse of such a powerful system. Given the volume of traffic in London, such a system will need to be linked to the DVLC computers in Swansea.

  We think the scheme should be challenged under the Human Rights Act and also the Data Protection Act - data collected for one purpose, i.e. road tolls, should not be made available for other purposes without the consent of the data subject.

  Such a system could also breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to privacy. The European Court of Human Rights has set the legal precedent that a person has equivalent privacy rights in their car as well as their home. There are even specific clauses in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act needed to explicitly permit warranted planting of bugging or tracking devices in a car, which would otherwise be illegal. Why should this principle be circumvented with sophisticated road pricing mass surveillance systems monitoring the movements of all vehicles in an area, not just those of a very few suspects under police surveillance ?

  Will the system be set up and handled by a private sector company ? Will private security companies employed by one borough or neighbourhoods be able to get warnings as vehicles from another areas or non-London vehicles approach or enter their City of London or Newham style electronic "burbclaves" ? Will this road congestion scheme be like the bus lane enforcement camera debacle ?

  Some form of road congestion pricing tolls are probably inevitable for a city like London, but the installation of yet another unregulated and insecure mass surveillance system in order to enforce it is too a high a price to pay.

• Will we see Jail webcams in the UK, like this one in Arizona, USA ? - Maricopa County Sherrif's Jail Webcam Is this a crime deterrent, or does it simply pander to even more voyeurism ?

• The Police Complaints Authority reports that CCTV "evidence" was used in the investigation of over 300 complaints against Police Officers last year, and they are pressing for all Police Station holding cells to be covered by CCTV. Unless such systems are not under the control of the Police station staff, then this will not prevent abuse such as that by the Custody Officer convicted of raping female suspects in the cells. Unfortunately, as there is no national enforceable code of conduct or regulation, some police forces such as Northumbria are using section 17 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigation Act 1996, a provision aimed at preventing child molestors from passing around CCTV interview evidence of their victims, in order to prevent CCTV "evidence" of an alleged police assault to the media or to the complainant.
• The Metropolitan Police in London are providing snapshot images from 80 of their traffic control CCTV cameras, available in near real time from the BBC London Live website as Jam Cam views. Being able to click on an interactive map and get a "live" picture gives an idea of the power of a linked mass surveillance system.

• CCTV operators are finally starting to register with the However, to date (June 2000), fewer than 50 such CCTV operators have registered - all the other CCTV cameras in the UK are in breach of the Data Protection Act - even if you think that you have a legitimate "crime prevention" use for a CCTV system, you still need to register !

  Check to see if your local CCTV scheme is om the Data Protection Register

• Is CCTV Surveillance in the UK in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights ?

  "In a judgment delivered at Strasbourg on 12 May 2000 in the case of Sultan KHAN v. the United Kingdom the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that there has been violations of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life)".

  This case concerns the use of covert surveillance equipment by the police, which in other countries would be covered by the "law and order" exemptions of Article 8.

  However, as there is still no law in the UK regulating CCTV Surveillance, and since there is still no Privacy legislation, it means that the "law and order" exemption clause in Article 8 similarly does not apply.

  Therefore, in our opinion, the use of CCTV Surveillance cameras, by the police, or by anybody else such as private companies, or local authorities, also breaches Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

   

• Channel 4 have started the publicity for the UK version of the voyeuristic "Big Brother" TV show and Website. The more we tolerate the portrayal of CCTV cameras spying on our every private moment, even for so called entertainment, the more likely this technology will be used to spy on us at home, at work, and in the street. The German version of the programme was criticised for violating the Human Right of Privacy - will the UK version be as intrusive ?
• Christian Nold, inventor of the "ASPAS Air Superiority Public Announcement System" is gathering resources for "an alternative documentary about CCTV"
• £33 million government funding for CCTV schemes has been announced 17 January 2000. The level of subsidy seems to be higher than previous Home Office schemes for England & Wales. £1.95 million funding for the Tube Car Parks "Hawk Eye" scheme was announced 30th December 1999. £4 million of funding for 13 schemes was announced 30th November 1999. Refer to our collation of these CCTV subsidy figures.
• December 24th is time for Global Accountability Theatre (GAT) - your chance to "Shootback" with a camera at all those busy invading your privacy when Christmas shopping
• Why are the UK authorities so worried about a 1998 book, "The Irish War" by Tony Geraghty ? Could it be that the computerised surveillance systems like the "Vengeful" database of vehicles using 100 or so "Glutton" automatic number plate recognition cameras developed to combat terrorism in Northern Ireland have made their way onto the mainland UK ? How difficult would it be to covertly link these to say the Trafficmaster Passive Target Flow Measurement infrastructure of over 8000 cameras ? The fact that the details of these have been published by the IRA newspaper before the book was published makes the impending prosecution of Tony Geraghty under the Official Secrets Act, really stupid.
• The 1999 Big Brother Awards were "won" again by the Home Office, in part for their subsidy and promotion of unlicensed CCTV Surveillance. One of the Winston awards went to Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong, authors of the academic research presented in "Surveillance, Closed Circuit Television and Social Control" and "The Maximum Surveillance Society"
• CCTV Archive contains online clips from TV producer Bill Rudgard's programmes such as "Police Stop!" and "Really Caught in the Act". CCTV film clips are for sale, and there is an offer to buy CCTV footage. This seems to be potentially damaging to privacy. Although the site does claim that even criminals faces are blurred, the tone is of the programmes is generally voyeuristic and promote CCTV as a solution to crime. Is broadcasting hidden camera footage of women's lavatories justified to warn "this type of material exists and to be cautious." ?
• Does anyone fancy emulating the Surveillance Camera Players of New York ? who seem to bring a new twist to the concept of Street Theatre
• The new Speedcheck -Speed Violation Detection Deterrent system to be installed on the M2 motorway in Kent looks remarkably similar in technology to the Trafficmaster PTFM system in that both use CCTV cameras and automatic vehicle number plate recognition. The same concerns about who has or could have access to the movement patterns of innocent motorists applies.
• BBC Scotland has an interview with Professor Jason Ditton, of the Scottish Centre for Criminology with some interesting comments on the scheme in Glasgow, where "the cameras were switched on in 1994, crime had fallen more sharply elsewhere than under their gaze. Street surveys had shown people do not feel any safer now. Cameras had not proved cost effective, producing just one arrest every 40 days." "The cameras were so vastly overhyped as a magic bullet cure for everything when they were introduced, that we were all blinded to the fact that this was a small addition in police terms, but a rather large incursion in civil liberty terms," said Professor Ditton. c.f. The Effect of Closed Circuit Television on Recorded Crime Rates and Public Concern about Crime in Glasgow (1999)
• The Sunday Mail (27th June 1999) reports "Police TV Spy Axed" and "Cops sack a TV worker who spied on women". The CCTV operator in Inverness who has been sacked for "not using the cameras in a manner he should have been". How can you be sure that your local CCTV scheme is being run to the highest operational and ethical standards, which are the same throughout the country ? It is unclear wether or not, as employee of a third party employment agency, contracted to the local police force, this camera operator would have been exempt from the proposed "dog licence" regulation of the private security industry
• Our limited edition campaign Tshirt, has now sold out. Watch out for a new design soon (send us suggestions of what you would like to see depicted on it)
• The Home Office has now announced another round of public CCTV subsidies . This £50 million tranche of funding out of £153 million earmarked for neighbourhood watch and other community security schemes represents more money than the previous 4 rounds of Home Office subsidies (totalling around £45 million). The impression given by the press release that the Data Protection Act 1998 will somehow regulate the voluntary codes of practice is misleading - there are exemptions for anything to do with "security" and the Data Protection Agency is still crippled by the Treasury rules on finance - any costs they win in court cases still goes back to the Treasury. What chance is there that they will be able to effectively regulate CCTV abuses as well as all their other work?
• According to a report by Polly Newton in the Daily Telegraph (13th May 1999):- 'The loss of privacy brought about by closed-circuit television cameras is "a price worth paying" for greater security, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, said last night. Mr Straw, delivering the annual Barnett lecture at Toynbee Hall in London, said that there were an estimated one million security cameras in stations, streets and shopping centres. On an average day in a big city, a person would be filmed by more than 300 cameras from 30 different CCTV networks "In effect, we have traded some of our rights to privacy in public spaces for increased security. Most of us think this is a price worth paying. The presence of CCTV has brought both reassurance and real reductions in crime and ... has become a key tool in bringing to justice some of the most serious criminals"'

  If we could be sure that such CCTV schemes were being installed and run properly, with a minimum of privacy loss to the public, we might agree with the Home Secretary, but unfortunately his laissez-faire attitude to the regulation of CCTV abuses is not acceptable

• The Home Office has published a consultative White Paper on regulating the Private Security Industry, with £23 licences lasting 3 years with about 10 people to collect the fees and inspect the whole £3billion a year industry. This should cover CCTV operatators, but, of course there will be a voluntary inspected companies scheme. This will not do anything about copyright of images and individual privacy - we will wait to see the details with apprehension, and we will be submitting a response before July 30th.
• The official celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four ("Big Brother is Watching You") will take place in the Beveridge Theatre, Senate Building, University of London, on Tuesday June 8, 1999, between 7 and 11 pm. The event will be jointly hosted by George Orwell's publisher, Secker Warburg, and Privacy International. The event will feature an exhibition, live music and theatre, and will hear talks from such notable figures as Orwell's son, Richard Blair, and Orwell's biographer, Bernard Crick.We will pass on offers of corporate sponsorship, at what promises to be a very high profile multimedia event, from providers of surveillance technology, who are not afraid to be branded as tools of the Ministry of Love.
• The recent nail bomb murders and maimings in London have brought the use of CCTV footage to the attention of the press and media again. Will the computer enhancement of the fuzzy images which were published in the press be sufficient to get a conviction, or will a defence barrister get them ruled as inadmissable ? The murder of Jill Dando has brought another release of CCTV footage from a department store (shades of Princess Diana) and an appeal for other CCTV operators to hand over their images to the police, who do not seem to know who might or might not have such footage, since the operation of CCTV cameras is, in the UK , completely unlicensed and unregulated..There are still no rules in the UK to prevent the sale of any CCTV footage of any of these incidents from being given or sold to TV or video distribution companies, or broadcast over the internet, no matter how sickening and upsetting this may be to the victims of these crimes and their friends and families..
• The left wing activists and Reclaim the Streets who are organising the June 18th day of action in various Financial Centres should take a good look at what they are up against in terms of modern UK Police Surveillance practices, as documented by Alan Lodge ("Tash") especially if they intend to enter the City of London financial district. Given the mistakes which are regularly made with CCTV images, how many regular City workers are going to be mis-identified as "troublemakers" or worse ?
• The recent (25th March 1999) edition of the Channel 4 TV investigative documentary Dispatches showed that there are already people serving prison sentences based on CCTV "evidence" of dubious quality and, as shown by research at the University of Sterling, that evenmost people cannot reliably identify faces of suspects even from very high quality CCTV images.
• Are you planning to be one of the estimated 30 million visitors a year to the massive new Bluewater Park shopping development near Dartford in Kent ? Apart from the hundreds of CCTV cameras inside the complex, do you realize that your car number plate will be tracked using Automatic Vehicle Number Plate recognition software ?
• What exactly do CCTV Surveillance camera operators see of street crimes ? Have a look at some digitized CCTV camera footage of an incident in Weston-super-Mare. See if your impression of what was going on coincides with the signed witness statement. You may need to download/install the RealPlayer G2 plug-in. Apologies to the North Somerset Police and others who have already tried to have a look, but who have probably had difficulties due to a small error in the URL - the clip should now be viewable ok over a 28.8 modem link
• Christmas Eve at noon is National Accountability Day in Canada, and, as the idea spreads through the Internet, a worldwide ShootBack Day The idea is to use your film or video cameras to make a record of the premises and people who routinely film and record you in public places. We welcome any news and images of the UK based efforts, for which we will provide free webspace and digitising if required. See the results of our own Xmas Eve ShootBack trip in central London.
• The resignation of the Welsh Secretary after the Clapham Common incident (what would the paparazzi press pay for CCTV footage of that ?) has shifted Paul Boateng into Alun Michael's position at the Home Office. Will he make a better job of CCTV Surveillance regulation, or will he, as a black, former left wing MP, be sidelined away from "security" matters ?
• The 1998 Privacy International Big Brother Awards ceremony gave an award to the London Borough of Newham's Mandrake Face Recognition system which went live in October 1998.
• How CCTV helped catch a Killer - or did it ? Is CCTV evidence really good enough to confirm or refute an alibi in a serious criminal case ?
• Have a look at the live RealVideo streamed cameras in Belfast run by the Royal Ulster Constabulary
• Amazingly, this website was recently blocked by the Cyber Patrol Internet blocking software.
• Does the new Trafficmaster Passive Target Flow Measurement represent a potential threat to civil liberties, and a valuable target for UK & Foreign Intelligence Agencies, terrorists and criminals interested in interested in tracking police cars, nuclear weapons convoys, high value cargoes, or Very Important Persons etc. around the motorways and trunk roads through CCTV and number plate recognition ?

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