As an arm of government and one of the public bodies charged with creating and maintaining social order within their jurisdictions, how do Local Authorities (LA) in the UK use, and potentially abuse, CCTV?
This paper offers a short overview of how local authorities use CCTV to facilitate their goals, based on my almost 20 year personal experience working for local authorities, in the area of civil protection and city management, and considers the impact on privacy and secrecy.
The Age of Surveillance?
Since the introduction of the first CCTV cameras in the 1960s, Local Authorities have been at the forefront of their proliferation into the UK’s public spaces. This had led to concerns that Local Authorities intrude on the privacy of its citizens and use the information in nefarious ways. Considering technological advances, particularly in body worn cameras, drones and face recognition technology and the ‘super charged’ monitoring opportunities that artificial intelligence presents, these concerns are magnified.
However the use of Local Authority CCTV is closely monitored and it’s impact on crime, safety and city management is significant. My own experience as the lead officer for a CCTV Control Centre in one of the UK’s ‘core cities’, where the Council’s public space CCTV is monitored, testifies to this.
In my city, CCTV is used successfully to manage the night-time economy, particularly the safety of women and girls at night – most recent public space camera installations in my city have been funded by the Home Office ‘Safer Streets’ initiative, with a particular focus on the safety of women and girls. Cameras are established in public areas (areas where there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy), where evidence indicates the safety of women and girls is compromised – particularly pedestrian routes from night time venues to residential areas, bus stops or taxi stands – they are clearly signposted and usually accompany an improvement in street lighting. This kind of targeted use of cameras usually results in a significant decline in reported crime and an increased sense of personal safety.
This highlights CCTV’s use more widely in managing anti-social behaviour; placing cameras in public space where anti-social behaviour has been a persistent problem is an effective tool in restoring order and public confidence and tackling and prosecuting street harassment, robbery, graffiti, vandalism, drug dealing, drug taking and public drunkenness.
CCTV is used to manage traffic flows, enforce bus lane and parking restrictions and manage large city events and protests in the city. well as being a powerful ‘incident response’ tool, providing emergency responders with images to supplement their situational awareness about an unfolding incident. With the advent of Martyn’s law, which followed the Manchester Arena attack in 2017, some venue operators and event managers, including Local Authorities, will be obliged to increase security around their venues and events, meaning the number of CCTV cameras in British cities is likely to increase further.
Like many other LAs, my LA also used CCTV to manage it’s housing assets, particularly entrances and communal areas.
All Local Authorities are subject to the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice (an adjunct to the Protection of Freedoms Act, 2012). The code is statutory, which means LAs must have regard to it, however, it is not legally binding. Failure to conform, however, can bring LAs into conflict with data protection and information security laws and lead to fines from the Information Commissioners Office. The code has 12 guiding principles including legitimacy of purpose for every camera, transparency (informing the public that a camera is operating in a particular area), proportionality (ensuring cameras do not inadvertently monitor private spaces), data protection and GDPR, retention and storage and review and assessment. The Code of Practice is available on the UK government’s .gov website.
The Code was followed closely in my city and formed the basis of internal and external audits of the use of CCTV and the CCTV monitoring centre.
The CCTV ‘Control Centre’ in my city has physical controls in place – entry to the Control Centre is physically separated from regular office space by a double door ‘airlock’ system and situated where windows cannot be overlooked. Access is restricted to the staff who work there. All Control Centre staff are vetted to ‘NPPV2’ (Non-Police Personnel Vetting Level 2) – a deeper process than a DBS or criminal records check. Although this gives the impression of ‘secrecy’ (‘oh, you work in the secret squirrel section!’) these measures ensure the cameras and the images they produce are not misused.
The centre itself is closely audited, both by the Council’s internal auditing teams, supported by Information Security and Data Protection staff, and by external auditors. As a result, the images captured by CCTV are treated sensitively, used only for the purposes for which they were collected (e.g. enforcing traffic and parking regulations), deleted after the appropriate amount of time and only shared when correct procedures and paperwork have been completed. The audits are overseen by the Council’s Audit Committee, made up of elected members from across the political spectrum. Unfavourable audits usually result in being ‘called’ to an Audit Committee meeting to explain any lack of assurance. Accountability is in place.
This doesn’t always reassure campaigners for privacy and, certainly in my city, low level but persistent concern from some citizens and Elected officials continues. Some of this concern has come into the media to light with stories of what some judge to have been ‘unfair’ uses of CCTV – more infamous examples include Poole Borough Council, who in 2008 used covert surveillance to challenge a family’s claim that they lived in a particular school catchment area and Sunderland City Council’s use in 2010 of covert surveillance to monitor suspected benefit cheats.
It is also worth noting that the Police are able to request access to both CCTV images and live monitoring for investigatory and ‘directed surveillance’ purposes. However, this can only be granted when the police have the necessary permissions in place under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Does this mean that these cameras can never be abused for clandestine surveillance or nefarious activity? Of course, not. With China flooding the market with cheap and effective cameras and operating systems, the ‘integrity’ of CCTV systems has been called into question. And the actions of badly motivated individuals, including Council staff and contractors, and the inevitable advancement of technology makes the continued monitoring and auditing of these Local Authority capabilities and activities essential.
However, my suspicion is that UK Local Authorities are too constrained by budgets, a reluctance to get ‘caught up’ in the legal intricacies of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and too well controlled by their own democratic checks and balances to present a general challenge to accepted notions of privacy and secrecy, particularly in the context of a society where the vast majority of citizens carry a mobile phone on them at all times.