The streets have eyes

Millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money has been spent installing and running CCTV systems, but the eyes on our streets are not necessarily making us any safer. Farah Hancock reports.

The cameras have won, according to one civil libertarian. They peer down from poles, peep out from under awnings and perch atop doors. Attempting to escape their gaze is futile.

"They're cheap, they're everywhere and I can't see them going away," Thomas Beagle of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties says.

There are more than 10,000 CCTV cameras surveilling public outdoor spaces in New Zealand, a fleet of digital eyes owned by local or central government agencies. Some are in place to monitor traffic, weather or flooding, but most commonly they’ve been installed for security.

In our biggest city, Auckland Transport and Auckland Council own about 5685 cameras combined

This amounts to four cameras per 1000 residents, and that doesn't include the cameras owned by Waka Kotahi, police, businesses, or installed at private properties. They're omnipresent.

Take a stroll through the shared car and pedestrian portion of Fort Street, in downtown Auckland, and you’ll be filmed by 21 different cameras in a space of about 100 metres.
 

It’s not just Auckland that’s peppered with cameras. There are eyes in the streets of almost every district in the country.
To map the location of publicly-owned cameras which capture footage of outdoor public spaces RNZ sent Official Information Act (OIA) requests to almost 100 different organisations.

Most of us would be unaware of the sheer number of cameras filming us as we go about our daily lives, mistakenly believing ourselves unobserved. Is there a good reason for all these cameras? Are they achieving their purpose? How much are we spending on them? And have we given up our privacy too easily?

Feel uncomfortable at the thought of being filmed? You’re not alone. Forty-one percent of New Zealanders are concerned about CCTV and facial recognition technology.

Acting Privacy Commissioner Liz MacPherson gets it. “From our experience there’s nothing like putting up CCTV or surveillance cameras to get a strong reaction. For that reason we strongly recommend that people and agencies use them cautiously and follow the rules.”

Those rules come courtesy of the Privacy Act. But RNZ’s research found not all authorities are abiding by it, even though breaching the Act can result in a penalty of up to $10,000.

MacPherson is at the coalface of complaints, many of which could be avoided if organisations followed the rules. 

"Any organisations that are contemplating using CCTV should carry out a privacy impact assessment that considers things like what will be filmed, whether that information is really necessary for the agency to carry out its work, how the agency will inform the public that they've been recorded - via signage, publishing CCTV policies on the website - and how the recorded footage has been kept safe and secure, including controlling who has access."

The commission has published guidelines covering what organisations should take into account before they install cameras. (The guidelines don’t apply to cameras installed in people’s homes, which can film significant portions of public space, too.) 

The guidelines are prescriptive. The first step suggests identifying why you’re installing cameras. “Clearly state the purpose or purposes of your CCTV system. When you do so, make sure you are specific. For instance, if your purpose for using CCTV is to prevent crime, explain the types of crime you seek to prevent.” Doing so, it says, will help organisations comply with the law, and make it easier to assess whether the system is successful or not. 

But some of the organisations that responded to RNZ’s OIA requests don't have policies covering their cameras’ objectives, data protection, rules around sharing footage, and policies vetting any volunteer staff monitoring the cameras. According to the Privacy Commission, these are essential to protect people’s privacy

MacPherson warns that those organisations ignoring the policies could face compliance action.

She also queries why some councils are installing cameras if they don’t have objectives - or, if they do, why the councils aren’t reviewing whether the cameras are achieving them.

"I would have thought that ratepayers would be asking, 'Is the CCTV camera system delivering the promised benefits, and does it actually justify the expense and maintenance'?"