CCTV, Data Analytics And Privacy: A Socio-Legal Analysis

Nishka Sharma, Symbiosis Law School, Pune

INTRODUCTION

The public discourse regarding the use of CCTV including automatic facial recognition and other methods is imbalanced. Critics whose perspective on the technology seems to be, or is presented as uniformly negative have caught the attention of both the media and regulators. In the larger context of proper restrictions to be put in place on the use of data and data analytics generally, there seems to be little interest in having a discussion regarding the effective regulation of CCTV analytics. It is hypothesised that this is because the dominant discourse chooses to portray CCTV video as requiring different treatment from other types of personal data when utilised in "artificial intelligence" or algorithmic sorting. Images might be seen as more intimate to an individual than other types of personal data, but in reality, there is no real reason to draw that distinction.

A significant and modest decrease in crimes has been associated with the usage of CCTV. CCTV is regarded as a Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) tactic that ups the formal surveillance in a target region. Depending on the situation, CCTV efficiency varies tremendously. CCTV prevents 16 out of 100 crimes and 26 out of 100 offences involving moving violations, according to the Crime Reduction Toolkit of the College of Policing. The situational approach to crime prevention focuses more on the context in which crimes occur than it does on the perpetrators. CCTV helps in the reduction of crimes by making it more likely that offenders will be caught and dealt with eventually. Criminals who don't want to get caught may be deterred by it. It helps security and law enforcement professionals by informing them of ominous behaviour from different citizens.