Clegg pledges stricter regulations on CCTV

20 May 10

By Amy Rowe

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has set the ball rolling for what he promises will be the biggest shake up in political reform since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

CCTV will be “properly regulated”, and databases holding innocent people’s DNA will be restricted, he said.

Speaking yesterday at Islington and City College, London, the Liberal Democrat leader said he wanted to "transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state".

This will include scrapping the ID card scheme and the National Identity Register. It would also mean the Contact Point database that holds information on 11 million children, would be made obsolete.

His pledge, or “power revolution,” was welcomed by the British Security Industry Association yesterday, which said regulation paved the way for the “development of national CCTV standards.”

"All that has been missing is effective regulation"
Brian Larkins, joint MD of CCTV company VMS told info4security it was "good" that CCTV regulation was high on the coalition government's to-do list. He said: "All that has been missing is effective regulation. Without that, it's little wonder that 80% of CCTV images are assessed by the police as 'not fit for purpose.'”

He went on to say that many CCTV systems did not comply with the Data Protection Act (DPA).

"Our VeriFi CCTV team routinely hear of cases where law abiding citizens have been refused access to their recorded CCTV images in the mistaken belief that it would be in contravention of the DPA. In fact, the exact opposite is the case.

“You are entitled to a copy of any images of you that are captured on CCTV operated by a business or organisation, subject to reasonable conditions. That's because recognisable images are just as sensitive as personal information held in a database."

Industry information estimates that there are between five and six million CCTV cameras in use in the UK today.