Overlooked - Liberty

Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain 41
to review, ultimately by the Data Protection Board which has a duty to supervise and powers of
inspection. Complaints are made to a local council or a court.
These experiences illustrate the value of specific safeguards, even where these are in addition to
constitutional provisions protecting privacy. In the US, the ACLU is running a “camera campaign” for
legislation to regulate the use of visual surveillance. The dramatic expansion of capacity is another
common theme, with Sweden going so far as to impose technological limits. Regulatory schemes
appear to be most advanced in those countries that have either adopted privacy legislation, or have
introduced specific legislation permitting CCTV, and incorporating requirements on its introduction
and management.
Public opinion will be an important factor in determining the future direction of CCTV in the UK. It is
particularly significant at present, as the coming year may represent a critical point in the application
of public space visual surveillance systems in the UK. The Crime Reduction Delivery Board has been
commissioned by the Home Office to prepare a national strategy for CCTV 85 . As stated earlier, the
ICO has also launched a consultation on the revised code of practice. The debate generated by
these initiatives will take place in the context of a demand for further massive public investment, to
replace outdated analogue video systems, many of dubious value, with digital technology.
Public support for CCTV has apparently been sustained throughout the last decade, despite a lack
of evidence that it is effective in reducing crime, or is having an impact on the fear of crime. The
apparent lack of informed public critical concern about potential privacy issues indicates that there
could well be a lack of balance in any public discourse.
It is clear that the government money invested in public space CCTV has produced mixed, even poor,
results. Home Office case studies published in 2004 led to the conclusion that, “At best CCTV can
work alongside other measures to generate some changes, but it is no easy panacea, and there is a
lot still to be learnt about how to use it to best effect” 86 . These fourteen studies showed variations in
whether schemes had had an impact on fear of crime, indicating no reduction in town centre areas,
but reductions in some but not all residential areas examined. As in past evaluations, there are
inevitable difficulties in evaluating and drawing conclusions from schemes with individually distinct
characteristics. In general terms, it has also been suggested that caution should be exercised when
considering and drawing conclusions from reports of opinion research on surveillance and privacy 87 .
The ICO sought to draw out more considered and informed opinion by conducting a series of
discussion groups with carefully selected members of the public, to provide the basis of policy
recommendations to government on the future management of visual surveillance technology 88 . It
emerged that public sector CCTV is perceived as benign, an anti-crime measure that brings benefit
to individuals with few disadvantages of which people are conscious. Another relevant factor in
public support for CCTV is trust in authority, and a genuine belief in the fairness of the system of law
85
Time for a new plan In CCTV Image, the official publication of the CCTV User Group, Summer 2006,
www.cctvimage.com/downloads/CCTV_Image_16_Summer_2006.pdf [20 December 2006]
86
The Impact of CCTV: fourteen case studies, Home Office Online Report 15/05 2005, at p36
87
Haggerty, K.D, & Gazso, A., The Public Politics of Opinion Research on Surveillance and Privacy, in
Surveillance & Society 3(2/3): 173-180. The authors advise caution over response rates, and critical
scrutiny over how surveys are constructed and interpreted.
88
Public attitudes to the deployment of surveillance techniques in public places, ICO March 2004