cctv

[johnbjohn]

In my place of work we have cctv, today the police asked if they could have a look to see if a customer they were looking for was in today, we let them i to have alook throught the tapes that were made on that day.
When i told my boss she said we were wrong to do this, as it is against the data protection act.
I work in a jobcentre and thought that that we should work with the police as we are all government employees. Could someone please tell me the correct way to do this. Thanks

[beryllium]

Have a read through this lot. We have cctv to protect our house and we have given the police tapes of people. Of course they could moan and winge about human rights.... but then so could I lol.....

http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/cctv/cctv13.h tm

http://www.cctv-data-protection.info/legal1/

[meglet]

Isn't the data protection act supposed to protect personal information? How can an image of someone on CCTV impact that. If you can't use it what's the point of having it?

[claguey]

Data Protection refers to any information you as an organisation hold about an individual, ie records, accounts etc either written or computer based and it cannot be released to a 3rd party without the consent of that person, unless there are data sharing protocols in place such as financial companies use to put you on a bad debtors list or give you credit. CCTV doesn't come under the Data Protection Act, plus you are right, there are information sharing protocols between agencies now. Ask your boss just what she thinks CCTV is for then?

[Stu Dent]

CCTV does indeed come under the DPA. You were quite quite correct to allow the police onsite, but not to view CCTV or take images away with them without the officers completing the appropriate paperwork. It's not your fault as an employee, it's your employers. Since you have access to CCTV 'DATA'!!!! they should supply the training so you know when and how it should be used. If you check around your building where CCTV cameras are trained, you should see notices notifying hte public that CCTV is in place - another DPA requirement. Your boss was right, but se can hardly blame you for getting it wrong without being trained properly.

[Miss Zippy]

There was a recent Court case which helped to determine what CCTV actitivites are covered by the Data Protection Act ("DPA"). In a nutshell, if the purpose of the CCTV activity is to capture general images for basic surveillance, then the images will not be covered by the DPA. More sophisticated CCTV systems which allow the user to zoom in on particular individuals for instance is likely to result in activity that does come within the DPA (but only those images which focus on a particular individual or group of individuals). The test is whether the purpose of the surveillance is learn more about a particular person's activites (eg, using CCTV to monitor staff).