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David Unwin/Stuff
The ICC will come under scrutiny for its improved ability to scrutinise.
A more comprehensive policy to manage the privacy implications of the Invercargill City Council’s planned significant increase in CCTV coverage in the city and Bluff will be put to councillors on September 5.
If they accept it as a draft, it will then go for public consultation.
At present the council has no stand-alone policy beyond references to CCTV in its wider privacy policy, a report from chief risk officer Andrew Cameron and Strategy, policy and engagement manager Rhiannon Suter says.
Although there had been no known privacy breaches to date “the lack of consistency, documentation, procedures and record-keeping exposes (the) council to unnecessary risks’’ the report says.
Police have access to some of the council’s live CCTV cameras, but it is of low quality and has at times proven of limited use, if any.
The potential for an upgraded system to enable better access to live footage meant that a memorandum of understanding with police was “strongly recommended’’.
Although use of CCTV is widespread among New Zealand councils, and many of them provide footage to police “it is not immediately clear that it is simple to do this without breaching privacy obligations,’’ the report says.
Advice had been sought from the Privacy Commissioner and through Local Government New Zealand, but none had been forthcoming apart from what was published on their websites.
And this was geared towards small businesses rather than public entities.
There were statements which suggest that installing CCTV to assist police in solving crime was an anticipated use of CCTV.
Conversely, there were also statements “which seem to require that CCTV only ever be installed for a particular business purpose of the organisation, and it is not correct to say that solving crime is a business function of (the) council’’.
The council’s draft policy covers training, clear definition of who could undertake specific tasks, record keeping of who had access to what equipment, when they had it, and around how the equipment was to be used and operated.
At this stage it was expected that the council would continue to store the footage securely, but “for a number of reasons’’, it may wish to use third-party products or storage.
In which case, it was extremely important the council be able to satisfy itself that it will be able to continue to meet its Privacy Act obligations.
“It is not a defence to an alleged privacy breach that the ‘fault’ lay with a third party product or service.’’
Most of the 200-odd cameras that the council has at present are in its building and parks, but more street and traffic cameras are planned after approaches from police, retailers, Invercargill Central Ltd, Community Watch and Māori wardens.
The improvements are scheduled to be commissioned in stages between December and February for the inner city, with South City and Bluff to follow in February and March.
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