QCCL Calls for Privacy Commissioner to Investigate the Use of CCTV

Michael Cope, the President of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, has written to the newly appointed Queensland Privacy Commissioner urging her to investigate the installation of CCTV by local Councils in Queensland which has so far proceeded without appropriate oversight, at least outside Brisbane.

Mr Cope said today, our society needs to wake up before it sleep walks into the Surveillance Society

The Council has a long standing concern about the use of CCTV particularly as part of the increasing level of surveillance of us all by both public and private bodies.

In the Council’s view there is no evidence to support the proposition that the use of CCTV deters crime.[1]  However, there does appear to be some evidence that CCTV assists in the prosecution of crime.[2]

In the light of this research and the events following the London bombings in July 2005, the Council modified its position to accept that there may be a case for the installation of CCTV in high risk areas but on the basis that the product of these cameras needed to be the subject of strict controls.

In particular, the Council is of the view that unless the CCT footage reveals some incident it should be destroyed within 24 hours.

The Council, despite modification in its policy, continues to resist the widespread installation of CCTV surveillance.  This is in our view part of the wider process by which our lives are coming under an increasingly intense surveillance by both public and private organisations.

Mr Cope said, “The Council repeats its call for local government to impose a moratorium on the introduction of further CCTV until a privacy impact assessment has been made by the office of the Privacy Commission and appropriate guidelines set down by her.”

[1] Report of the UK Home Office, February 2005 and a report to the Home Office reported by The Guardian on 18 May 2009.

[2] See the Literature Review conducted by Stephen Greenhalgh on behalf of the Office of the Information Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, August 2003. found at http://www.oipc.ab.ca/pages/home/default.aspx