Private CCTV

[Hazell B]

This morning I noted my next door neighbour has a small camera above his front window pointing at the place he parks his car.

It's a row of Victorian terrace houses, with fronts directly onto pavement, so he's filming the public path and road outside his house. As it happens he's a rubbish parker, so generally ends up half in front of his house and half mine (so I started to pull up to with an inch of my house edge just to annoy him :p : ), which means his camera is on my vehicle's bonnet and his car's boot end.

Is having a private CCTV camera on a public street legal?

I was told by the police we could film (record) pictures within a pub where I worked, but not sound, so long as the camera didn't allow us to film what was happening outside the pub's windows. I've also been told by a neighbour that the council made him move his own private CCTV camera so it didn't show the street beyond his back garden gate.

Until this morning I've always been in favour of CCTV use, both private and police or council, but now I'm not liking it so much. I don't think a private individual should be filming the street outside his property, especially if he has sound (though I don't know he has, of course). If I'm having a conversation on the pavement outside my house, he will be able to listen and maybe record.

There's been no crimes since my run in with the kids bouncing on cars a few months ago, so this new camera is not there for a good reason IMO. It's not to prevent crime either - he has no warning signs (which I think are a legal requirement for private CCTV use in gardens, anyway)

So, how would everyone else feel if something similar happened and you could be filmed while outside you own house by a nosey neighbour?

[BeansBeansBeans]

I don't think it's legal, but I'm not 100% sure.

Lots of my neighbours have those security lights that are meant to go off when someone strays onto their property. Sadly, the lights are triggered by people walking past on the footpath, so god knows what use it is to them.

[allycat228]

I used to have cctv when i lived in N.ireland, I had a drive but i could still hear my neighbours talking so be carefull what you say about your neighbour, even if something happend to your neighbour and it was filmed he could be done under the human rights act,all they do is help the price of house insurance come down

[Quattroporte]

What is a CCTV camera? U mean like security? If you're not doing anything dodgy outside his house why should it bother you?

[ShiftingGears]

I'm generally against surveillance, and I most certainly would be against it if my neighbour had a CCTV camera out the front of his house.

[Storm]

I am not sure he can really pick up all that sound etc from that far away....
anyways I was always under the impression that your neighbour would be really far away since I thought you lived on a ranch like (or a farmhouse) thing :p :

[draper]

as i understand it if hes recording the images and/or sound he needs a sign saying so, my mum and dad have cameras at there house that DONT record sound, theyve had them 9-10 yeras and never had a problem (altho there pointless if they dont record imo)

[oily oaf]

Good Jokeday

A strangely spooky thread this one as only last weekend I installed a spy in the sky type device to my rooftop tv aeriel in a bid to identify and track down the young scallywags who have been damaging my little fence of late before visiting their places of abode and pouring a low flashpoint accelerant through their letterboxes and burning them and their pikey mums and dads in the comfort of their own homes.

By a strange and somewhat fortuitous quirk of fate all did not go to plan due to a rather strong overnight wind, a by product of a westerly gale backing NNE off The German Bight (rustle pant, grapple),which caused the camera to alter it's angle of trajectory slightly and instead became trained on the bedroom window of my good friends across the road Bangla Beryl, a cross dressing contortionist from the Hindu Kusch and her partner "Long" John Yi a Chinese ladyboy and research chemist from Dagenham.

Imagine my surprise my friends when I studied that evenings footage and instead of a series of poor quality grainy stills of tragically doomed toerags I was presented with a pot pourri of highly charged homemade erotica that I will not even begin to describe on this a family forum.
I will say however that I thought the donkey put up a highly spirited performance for a novice :)

Naturally my inherent sense of decency came immediately to the fore and I set about compiling a threatening blackmail note with letters cut from the newspaper at once.

How they laughed and saw the funny side as they handed over their life savings, car and property deeds in a pathetic and doomed attempt to stop me posting their vile gyrations on the Blue Peter message board :mad:

Next week:
How a Force 7 gale produced some inadvertant but highly damning footage of Beans Beans Beans locked in a passionate clinch with an elderly Gibbon on the towpath of East India Dock.

[Eki]

What is a CCTV camera? U mean like security? If you're not doing anything dodgy outside his house why should it bother you?
What is dodgy? I don't think, for example, picking your nose or scratching you butt isn't very dodgy, but I imagine few of us would like that be recorded on a video without our knowledge and potentially ending up in the internet (YouTube, etc) for everybody to see.

[LotusElise]

I wouldn't be comfortable with it. I'm sure it's illegal if you don't have signs up anyway.
If the neighbour had come round and spoken to you about it and what it was there for, it might be different.

[BDunnell]

Interesting question. I am sure that I saw an item on a recent edition of Crimewatch in which a fatal shooting in a London street was captured on someone's private CCTV camera. This footage was then used on the programme. Of course, I may have mis-remembered this, but this is what I recall.

I have no idea whether it's legal or not (though the matter of needing to have a sign up rings a bell), but I don't like the idea — and what practical use is it? Smacks of paranoia to me.

[CarlMetro]

http://www.nfh.org.uk/resources/Articles/cctv/index.php

[Iain]

I always thought they needed a sign, or is that just for businesses?

[allycat228]

I never had a sign, i did not know you needed one?

[GridGirl]

The man who lives across the street from my mum's house who I like to call Bug Buster has an array of CCTV camera's.

Late last summer practically everytime I left my mums house I used to see Bug Buster half naked in the upstairs front bedroom getting changed. My mum lives on a hill and their upstairs bedrooms are directly in you line of vision as you leave the house. One day when playing musical cars on the driveway I happened so say quite loudly "Look over there, Bug Buster is naked again" or something to that affect to my mum and brother who were with me at the time. By that weekend, net curtains had gone up, and I never saw Bug Buster butt again.

I didnt really think much of it although I was happy not to see his half naked body every fews days. Bug Buster and his neighbours are having a dispute over something and the gossip eventually filtered through to my mum about this argument where his CCTV camera's sound had picked them up slagging him off or something. I can only presume Bug Buster heard me too.

[Hazell B]

If you're not doing anything dodgy outside his house why should it bother you?

That's what I used to think, but then when I climb into my car and there's a camera less than ten feet way trained on me I start to hate it. If a friend came up and we chatted, it wouldn't be a private conversation would it? I've nothing to hide, yet still dislike the idea of a stanger listening in to me! I cannot understand why the neighbour would have his camera outside his house above a window other than to record/listen in to people talking, when he would have the same exact view from inside the window.

Storm - the house isn't where the stables are sadly. I'm not rich enough for big country houses :p : My home is a small one :(

Carl - thanks for the link. I've had a read at some of the things it leads to and they're interesting but not very informative. Typical with red tape situations :mark:

[tintin]

I will say however that I thought the donkey put up a highly spirited performance for a novice :)



How do you know the donkey was a novice? :s

[Hazell B]

Have you ever heard a donkey boast about being experienced? :p :

[tintin]

Have you ever heard a donkey boast about being experienced? :p :

No, only teenage boys do that...

[oily oaf]

How do you know the donkey was a novice? :s

Elementary my dear Tintin.

I deduced that the 4 legged fornicator was a relative newcomer to the "swinging" scene when I noticed that as the 2 other protagonists in the tawdry menage a trois started ripping each others togs off he hid under the bed.

Ah bless :)

[Funks]

A private resident can have a system installed that allows them to monitor & record images that cover the areas to the boundary of their premises AND immediately outside it... mainly for the purposes of protecting car park spaces - as in this instance.

They do not have to display signs in situations like this - they are exempt from the Data Protection Act so long as the system is for that purpose.

Audio recording is permitted - in fact I would encourage people to have audio recorded if they are thinking of having a system fitted. It is amazing what people will divulge when they are about to commit a burglary - they may realise the cameras are there and wear balaclavas or spray the lens with paint but they often neglect to consider that the audio is still recorded. Calling each other by first name is very helpful to us Police when we come to investigate the crime! ;) I'm yet to hear a criminal shout out their full names, dates of birth and current address but the day will come. :p :

[oily oaf]

Blimey! I didn't know you were Old Bill Funks :eek:
(shifts nervously in seat)

'ere you couldn't nip down to Upton Park and nick those mugs in claret and blue and get 'em all a ten stretch in "The Windsor Hotel" for impersonating a football team could ya? ;)

As Terry Thomas once remarked "What a shower!" :mad:

[Captain VXR]

So that's where your great moderating skills come from, being an officer of the law

[Funks]

You can rest reasonably easy Oily - though I am a former officer. Now I'm in civvy street as a video analyst for my local constabulary.

[Ian McC]

I look forward to seeing Hazell misbehaving on Caught On Camera :D

[Hazell B]

They do not have to display signs in situations like this - they are exempt from the Data Protection Act so long as the system is for that purpose.

Audio recording is permitted - in fact I would encourage people to have audio recorded if they are thinking of having a system fitted.

That's where the law hits a snag. According to the sections of the Human Rights Act I read, you can only use recorded images and sounds for police and home use, otherwise you're breaking the Acts (fairly vague) rules.

So, my neighbour can stay within the law if he only uses the camera for himself and the police in the event of a crime. He's breaking the law if he listens in on a conversation in the street and then tells anybody other than a police officer. That's why I have a serious problem with him having it.

We live within a few yards of a public riverbank area, where kids play and people sit on the benches chatting. He pans the camera about towards perfectly legal citizens having a sit down and chat :(

Having said all that, I'm not going to compalin to him about it's use however much I dislike it. One of my neighbours said she's seeing a local community person (don't know what the job tittle is) about something else and will complain to them about the camera, but I think it's a bit unfair without first talking to the camera user. For all we know he may have had personal threats or something (he's gay) and be in fear of his life.