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City Council Ordered To Stop CCTV In Taxi Cabs
judgecorp writes "Southampton Council in the UK has been ordered to stop snooping on every taxi cab in the city. Privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office has said it is "disproportionate" to demand that every Southampton taxi has CCTV that constantly monitors driver and passengers, including recording all conversations."
Or at least in Sydney, pretty much every cab has recording devices "for the safety of driver and passenger". Most appeared after the well publicised bashing of taxi drivers. Thanks numpties for ruining privacy for the rest of us.
The organisation doing the "telling off" here, the Information Commissioner's Office, is actually surprisingly good at these sorts of cases, on these sorts of scales. I know someone who was being followed by his landlord (by PIs -- looking for any breach of his tenancy agreement), and the ICO prosecuted all involved; a solicitor was disbarred and the landlord might face criminal prosecutions. In this case, the relatively small bit of government -- a city council, the smallest 'unit of democracy' in the UK -- being told off here has no choice but to take the ruling and stop taping everyone's conversation (and/or sexy fun time) in the back of a cab.
Quite why it is that the ICO can tell off Southampton Council for recording people routinely, and yet can do nothing about the fact that everyone's movements across and through London are routinely tracked, however, escapes me. There are more CCTV cameras in london per capita than anywhere else in the world; one need only walk around outside and be followed, tracked and dated whenever you're going anywhere. Automatic CCTV numberplate recognition algorithm will automatically fine you for stopping on a (double) yellow line for more than a minute, or for straying into a bus (or, now, unfortunately, "Games") lane, irrespective of whether or not you had any choice in the matter. I find it depressing that the specific extra-governmental regulatory body designed to stop these sorts of things is so powerless when it comes down to telling off people who actually are important.
My UID is prime. Is yours?
I live and work in the UK and I cycle everywhere. Part of the reason is precisely because it's difficult for the government to interfere with your business. The way I see it, the fewer interactions I have with the government the better.
If you take public transport, you're on CCTV everywhere. Naturally, you can be subject to searches when leaving train stations or even in bus stations.
If you drive a car, at some point you're going to get pulled over. You're going to get a ticket of some sort with high probability.
With cycling, there's no tax to pay. No fuel to pay for. There's no real way to be stopped and searched on a bicycle.
Often, it is faster than a car journey anyway.
Cycling is probably one of the only remaining modes of transport that is truly free in both senses of the word.
I've helped installed a few of the "Captured by Askari Taxi Security Camera Systems" (used by cabcharge in Queensland in response to the given bashing) a few years ago and the data recorded is nowhere near as bad as the OP suggests.
The system only records infra-red JPEG images (with GPS and timestamp) of the inside and outside doors upon the following conditions:
- The brakes are applied hard
- The door opens
- The meter is payed
- 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after the panic button is pressed (in 5 second intervals)
These might have changed in the last few years but I doubt it.
I'm thinking that this is only because of the recording of conversations as all public transport has CCTV installed these days. None of them record your voice though there are rumblings of installing microphones in street lamps to complement the cameras. There's even talk of installing speakers which would make the England of V a reality.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
What surprises me is why anybody needed to explain to them why this was a bad idea. Are they completely incapable of thinking these plans through before pushing ahead?
Somebody in the council has some relatives or protegees at a company supplying or installing those cameras? You know... one doesn't need to invent the whole TSA to waste some budget.
Though I wouldn't be keen on the council monitoring it all I would certainly keep CCTV in my cab if I were a taxi driver as a deterrent.
I'm not sure where you got the idea the council was monitoring it all; that seems very unlikely to me. Also, the main part of the ICO ruling was that *audio* recording was a disproportionate breach of privacy.
Assume first that there are clear warnings in the taxi of the existence of video and audio recording. Focus on the audio recording, which is what is being outlawed. Reasons audio recording is a good idea:
1) Provides evidence/refutation of allegations of assault or verbal abuse by driver or passenger;
2) Provides evidence/refutation of fare abuse by driver or dodging by passenger.
Reasons it is a bad idea:
3) Driver would prefer not to have his speech recorded;
4) Passenger would prefer not to have his speech recorded.
Now 3) is obviously important - someone who is unhappy with being able to talk while in his vehicle (e.g. chat to his friend while he's waiting for a fare) is facing unacceptable working conditions. But for those drivers who /are/ happy with the recording, there remains only 4) - the case where the driver wants speech recorded but the passenger doesn't want what he is saying in earshot of the driver to be recorded.
It is already well-known that, under RIPA, a telephone conversation (or similar) may be recorded by one of the two parties without the other party knowing. This is logical: if one person can hear it, then one person has a memory of the conversation; and an accurate recollection is obviously better than a potentially faulty one. But there is a caveat: the recording cannot be released to a third party unless warning of the recording has been given.
So what the passenger is saying is that he does not want the driver to have an accurate recollection of what he can hear within his car, even when the driver would like that recollection. You may argue that, on balance, the justifications 1) and 2) from the driver's view are insufficient in light of 4). I haven't yet seen a convincing argument, however. And it's certainly wrong to state, "I believe no normal person, with normal levels of intellect would believe it's a good idea". Indeed, your "only an idiot would believe otherwise!" groupthink is becoming endemic amongst the geek clique, making it harder for them to understand what appear to be an ever increasing set of disagreeable laws.
I drive a taxi in finland and each and every one of the taxis has a camera, a GPS logger and a sealed fare meter and gps navigation. For myself the gps and camera are features that I'd never do the work without. The camera installs in itself lowered taxi robbings and muggings to nearly zero, only leaving the people on drugs or alcohol who attack or try to rob taxi drivers.
The gps is also a huge safety feature as when the panic button is pressed all of the others cars in town see me in their gps navigation and everyone near me comes to help. I'd never work in a company that covers the cameras or doesn't have the gps logging. Also the data in the camera is stored on an external server and is really hard to get to, requiring a police warrant to even see the data. I can only see a live feed from the camera in the car to adjust its angle.
Of course in Finland the whole taxi industry is regulated by the government and the local cities, so that enables the huge security brought on by the GPS logging for the driver. Also as the taxi fares are calculated by GPS and by car speed data, and the fares are set by the government, as a passenger youi never have to be afraid of getting cheated with the meter.
People in the US often have a different attitude to CCTV then many people on this side of the pond.
You may see CCTV as an invasion of privacy. It actually varies here.
I work in a hospital. There are a lot of cameras around here. I have never come across anyone who works here who does not want them. Most people actually want more. They are there for our protection. You don't get them in the wards, operating theatres, toilets. You get them in public areas like corridors, A&E, waiting areas car parks and so on. They can be used to send people to areas where trouble might occur. They can be used to record events that need police or legal action and so on.
This has to be similar to CCTV in taxis. It could be used to deter (There are signs about it) and it can be used to prosecute. It might prosecute a taxi driver for attacking a passenger but is more likely to be used for the misdeeds of passengers.. I know taxi drivers like having CCTV. They would probably like it more if it was free but that's human. We just need councils keeping their noses out where they are not needed.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.