Norfolk Police want your dashcam footage. Do you feel lucky, punk?
I wrote recently about the change to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) registration process, which enables domestic users of CCTV to notify the ICO of that fact, and pay the requisite fee of £35. I noted that this meant that
it is the ICO’s apparent view that if you use CCTV in your household and capture footage outside the boundaries of your property, you are required to register this fact publicly with them, and pay a £35 fee. The clear implication, in fact the clear corollary, is that failure to do so is a criminal offence.
I didn’t take issue with the correctness of the legal position, but I went on to say that
The logical conclusion…here is that anyone who takes video footage anywhere outside their home must register
I even asked the ICO, via Twitter, whether users of dashcams should also register, to which I got the reply
If using dashcam to process personal data for purposes not covered by domestic exemption then would need to comply with [the Data Protection Act 1998]
This subject was moved from the theoretical to the real today, with news that Norfolk Constabulary are encouraging drivers using dashcams to send them footage of “driving offences witnessed by members of the public”.
Following the analyses of the courts, and the ICO, as laid out here and in my previous post, such usage cannot avail itself of the exemption from notification for processing of personal data “only” for domestic purposes, so one must conclude that drivers targeted by Norfolk Constabulary should notify, and pay a £35 fee.
At this rate, the whole of the nation would eventually notify. Fortunately (or not) the General Data Protection Regulation becomes directly applicable from May next year. It will remove the requirement to give notification of processing. Those wishing, then, to avoid the opprobrium of being a common criminal have ten months to send their fee to the ICO. Others might question how likely it is that the full force of the law will discover their criminality, and prosecute, in that short time period.
The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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