Locks and Security News: your weekly locks and security industry newsletter
17th April 2024 Issue no. 701
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Local authorities must consider legal obligations before requiring the installation of CCTV
The ICO has warned local authorities that they must consider their legal obligations before requiring the installation of CCTV equipment.
The comments come after the ICO issued Southampton City Council with an enforcement notice this week over its mandatory policy of installing audio recording CCTV equipment in all of the city's taxis and private hire vehicles. The cameras constantly record images and the conversations of both passengers and drivers.
The ICO has ruled the council's policy breaches the DPA, concluding that the recording of all conversations is disproportionate given the very low number of incidents occurring compared to the number of trouble free taxi journeys.
The ICO has recently investigated a similar policy that was proposed by Oxford City Council. In this case, the ICO took preliminary enforcement action stating that the recording of passengers' and drivers' conversations in the city's taxis would breach the Data Protection Act. The Oxford City Council have now suspended the implementation of their policy.
Responding to both incidents the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said:
"We hope this action sends a clear message to local authorities that they must properly consider all the legal obligations on them before requiring the installation of CCTV or similar equipment and that audio recording should be very much the exception, rather than the rule."
The ICO has published a CCTV Code of Practice to help local authorities and other organisations using CCTV to stay within the law.
1st August 2012