Overlooked - Liberty

Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain 45
a critically important role for the ICO in focusing the ‘constitutional’ implications of data management,
taking account of Article 8, the Human Rights Act, and EU developments 100 . It will be necessary for
the Commissioner to be proactive in asserting the need for safeguards, and enforceable codes of
practice, as well as ensuring that essential incremental change is carried through.
Debating the future of visual surveillance
It takes time for regulation to catch up with technological advance, and the need for a broad, wellunderstood
national strategy, coupled with a regulatory system flexible enough to respond to
change has never been greater. The ubiquity and general tolerance of CCTV cameras in daily life
means that major changes in the nature of surveillance could take place without the public being
fully informed and the implications properly tested. The use of digital techniques using biometric
identification systems, and smart systems to track behaviour, as well as simple loudspeaker and
microphone devices without informed consideration risk the occurrence of unforeseen and
unintended consequences.
The unfettered expansion of technology has the potential to lead in the direction of startling crossdatabase
applications of recorded material. Experience in other jurisdictions emphasises the
importance of countries being able to rely on legislative, constitutional, and international standards.
China’s Golden Shield Project is an attempt to converge numerous technological applications in
public sector infrastructure, banking and finance, and a range of public databases, as a matter of
routine crime prevention and investigation. It has been reported by one writer that Golden Shield’s
aim is to integrate this gigantic online database with a surveillance network, incorporating speech
and face recognition, closed circuit television, smart cards, credit records, and other surveillance
technologies 101 . In 2003, the US Congress overruled an attempt by the Pentagon to introduce a
scheme, Total Information Awareness, (later referred to as Terrorist Information Awareness), capable
of interrogating multiple public databases, although the dismissal of this proposal has not quelled
anxieties about future moves in that direction 102 .
The Information Commissioner is the lynchpin of effective regulation. Some significant questions are
posed as a result of current experience in this context, and must be resolved urgently: the ability of
the Data Protection Act to regulate visual surveillance; the need for the ICO to have adequate
resources to monitor and sufficient enforcement powers to take action over breaches of DPA
requirements.
These questions do not however address the more fundamental issues for the future management
of visual surveillance that are beyond the remit of the Information Commissioner. The expenditure of
further huge sums of public money in updating schemes alone should increase the demand for
100
Korff, D., & Brown, I., UK Information Commissioner Study Project: Privacy and Law Enforcement,
Foundation for Information Policy Research, February 2004.
101
China’s Golden Shield Project, in Computing as a tool of governmental repression, Stanford University
website making reference to China’s Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance
Technology in the People’s Republic of China, Walton, G. at: http://www.ichrdd.ca/english/commdoc
/publications/globalization/goldenShieldEng.html (04/08/2006).
102
The defeat of the proposal is referred to in a New Scientist article, Citizens Strike Back in Intelligence War,
13 October 2003: http://www.newscientist.com/article.nsid=dn4246 The ACLU had made a substantial
submission to Congress: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/16854leg20030619.html (11.09.06).