Locks and Security News: your weekly locks and security industry newsletter
24th April 2024 Issue no. 702

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Domestic use of CCTV ruling

In December, the Court of Justice of the EU made a notable ruling* in a case the ICO has been following closely, on how data protection law applies to individuals using surveillance cameras to protect their property. The judgment ruled that a household's usage of a CCTV camera that filmed both their own driveway and the street outside their house was not covered by the domestic exemption for images recorded of people outside their property.

Clearly this is a significant judgment. The ICO has previously considered the domestic exemption to be quite broad, but the judgment suggests a more narrow interpretation, which could have an effect beyond surveillance cameras.

The ICO is talking to the Ministry of Justice about the effects on UK law. They will be studying the judgment in detail before deciding what steps are needed to take, starting by considering where the ICO's CCTV code of practice might need updating and what guidance members of the public will now need.

* The second indent of Article 3(2) of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as meaning that the operation of a camera system, as a result of which a video recording of people is stored on a continuous recording device such as a hard disk drive, installed by an individual on his family home for the purposes of protecting the property, health and life of the home owners, but which also monitors a public space, does not amount to the processing of data in the course of a purely personal or household activity, for the purposes of that provision.

14th January 2015