Assistant chief constable Nick Gargan of Thames Valley Police said officers should be given access to the secret footage “with the minimum of bureaucracy”.
“The suite of overt and covert surveillance tactics that are available to us are fundamentally important and the position of ACPO is that they really must be defended and made accessible to us,” he said.
“We should be able to make use of covert local authority CCTV, with the minimum level of bureaucracy, because everybody knows it is there and we shouldn’t be hampered in our research.”
Info4security has run several stories on local authorities adopting hidden cameras in the last few months.
Orwellian infrastructure
Appearing before the Home Affairs select committee as its year-long investigation into Britain’s surveillance society drew to a close, Gargan said people were wrong to fear CCTV.
“Any perception on the part of the public that there is some kind of Orwellian infrastructure sitting behind society where these cameras are terrible well-integrated and joined up as part of a surveillance state is entirely wrong.”
ACC Gargan also cast doubt on the popular claim that there are 4.2m CCTV cameras in the UK.
“My understanding is that 4.2m is an estimate based on a study which dates back to 2002,” he said.
“The study looked at the number of cameras found on Putney High Street in London and then did a quick calculation and extrapolated that there must be 4.2m across the United Kingdom. We approach that figure with some scepticism.”
Gargan was unable to provide MPs with a more accurate estimate but said he is confident that there are around 30,000 local authority-operated street cameras.
These so-called public space cameras have been the focus of the Association’s new strategy, which is currently awaiting publication after being approved by ministers.
The standard identifies the need for:
– clear standards;
– guidelines on registration, inspection and enforcement;
– training; and
– police use of CCTV.
ACPO also wants to set standards for storage/archiving, emerging technologies, changing threats, new priorities and partnership working.
However, a recent study suggests that just 16 per cent of all surveillance cameras would be affected by the standard. The remaining 84 per cent are thought to be privately-owned and their use would only be governed by existing codes of practice, data protection controls and harassment laws.
Monitor differently
Peter Neroud, the chief executive of the National Police Improvement Agency, said he doesn’t think members of the public realise how effective CCTV is in investigating crime.
“Our guesstimate, on a very short piece of work we did with one force, is that we getting almost as many detections (either directly or indirectly) from CCTV as we’re getting from DNA and fingerprints. It’s a hugely important part of serious crime investigation.”
Appearing before the same committee last year, Dr Ian Forbes, a leading consultant, told MPs that CCTV had to be monitored differently to strike a better balance between security and civil liberties.
“Local communities and citizens under surveillance have few if any opportunities to see and learn from what the vast number of cameras see,” he said.
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