IP CCTV and The Law?

[mr.anderson]

I am looking to start rolling out an IP CCTV system across the Hotel I work in. In a random discussion yesterday, someone mentioned that IP CCTV footage was not submissible in court.

I cant see why this would be the case. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[timwilky]

There is a lot of argument that many if not most CCTV installations fail to comply with the law, principally data protection act.

However, even if the installation was ruled to be in breach of the law, I could not see a judge refusing to accept a video showing who had plunged the carving knife between the shoulder blades of the chef.

[SoulKiss]

I am looking to start rolling out an IP CCTV system across the Hotel I work in. In a random discussion yesterday, someone mentioned that IP CCTV footage was not submissible in court.

I cant see why this would be the case. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Generally speaking its down to how tamperable is the system.

Digital Systems are seen as "weak" in that way.

[Baph]

I'm sort of with tim on this.
However, forget about installation (that will only cause problems if an employee raises issues). Instead, concentrate on health & safety, and on access to images/operating licence requirements.
Fail on those two, and a judge will refuse it regardless of the claimed crime. That applies to non IP systems too.

[mr.anderson]

Thanks for the pointers gents.

Just spoke to an "Industry Expert" who has said that it is more to do with digitally recorded images than IP CCTV - of course to overcome this, one would need to go back to tapes or something horrible like that.

Seeing as we already use a central recorder to store 30 days of images onto a local HDD, we're in no different situation going IP.

Security around the stored data will be priority then (as normal).

[jambo]

I was involved in running a community CCTV project for a while. The legal side of that was a bit of a headache, but then, we were filming public, rather than private spaces, which didn't help.

Most of the hurdles are data protection act related for private spaces as far as I'm aware.

Jambo

[Neeja]

However, even if the installation was ruled to be in breach of the law, I could not see a judge refusing to accept a video showing who had plunged the carving knife between the shoulder blades of the chef.

Surely this is irrelevant and would never crop up in court. It should be obvious to everyone involved that the butler did it. :cool:

[Spiderman]

Mr A..... this website is where i was directed to for more info about the do's and dont's of CCTV installs and Data Protection.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/
HTH :)

[-Ralph-]

I'm doing some work around this with a city council whose city centre CCTV systems are all IP and digitally recorded, I know very little about the systems themselves, but am dealing with the environment and infrastructure where the images are stored back at the data centre. I know that in terms of comms, private links are used to each camera cluster as opposed to having data traversing the internet, this is where you are most likely to get "insubmissable in court".

You need to be able to demonstrate to the court that the integrity of that data could not have been compromised, through compliance with auditable procedures around security of that data


Access control over who has electroinc access, user accounts, two factor authentication, etc
Have the platform regularly pen tested and close any holes found that could allow unauthorised electronic access internally or externally (ie: Hackers)
Use robust encryption whenever the data leaves the authorities control, ie: tape backup stored offsite, traversing the internet, etc
Ensure physical security for the platform, ie: located in a caged area in a secured data centre, with controlled personnel access, cctv, etc.

[mr.anderson]

I'm doing some work around this with a city council whose city centre CCTV systems are all IP and digitally recorded, I know very little about the systems themselves, but am dealing with the environment and infrastructure where the images are stored back at the data centre.

What sort of infratructure are you using to support this? What type of storage and what sort of volumes of data have you seen?

We will ultimately have 100 cameras throughout our building, all going over our internal network. I have forecasted a maximum of 3gb/camera/24hours on average based on movement activated recording and 2fps.

[SV-net]

I heard a case once where a telephone conversation was recorded without consent. In a court case this recording was offered as evidence, however because it was recorded without consent it was not allowed to be used. However, the fact remained that the recording did exist and that the jury heard that it had taken place. Enough so that the case fell apart after this point. Good news depending on what side you were.
I guess it really depends on the motives for having cctv and the rules around it, I dont feel comfortable on my work cctv. Just let me get on with my job and trust goes a long way.

[-Ralph-]

What sort of infratructure are you using to support this? What type of storage and what sort of volumes of data have you seen?

We will ultimately have 100 cameras throughout our building, all going over our internal network. I have forecasted a maximum of 3gb/camera/24hours on average based on movement activated recording and 2fps.

I'm under NDA, I know I haven't named the council, but better if I drop you a PM.

Use the camera vendor's pre-sales support though, if you give them your resolution, fps, expected traffic/number of record activations per day, and your retention policy, they should be able to tell you how much storage you need to start off with. Obviously this will need to be scalable as the data may grow quickly depending upon your retention policies. It will only need to be low cost/low availability storage anyway, DAS full of SATA will probably be sufficient.

[mr.anderson]

One way I could do it is by expanding my MSA2312FC by 4 more shelves (12TB at Raid 5 = 11TB per shelf). That is quite expensive though.

What storage have you seen used?



EDIT: Note to self: read PM's before posting.

[-Ralph-]

One way I could do it is by expanding my MSA2312FC by 4 more shelves (12TB at Raid 5 = 11TB per shelf). That is quite expensive though.

What storage have you seen used?



EDIT: Note to self: read PM's before posting.

Camera system and capacity required aside, I'd imagine you'd treat it the same as any other low cost storage, MSA 60 SAS disk shelves or similar.

But, if you already have the SAN controller and the fibre fabric, then you'd only be adding the same disks and similar cost shelves as you would have to by going the MSA60 route, what makes it expensive is not the upgrade itself, but the fact you are taking capacity away from your fibre attached SAN that you may need later for an application with higher availability and performance needs. If your never going to use that SAN for anything else, then it won't be much different in terms of cost to upgrade it, compared with starting from scratch with DAS.

[TSM]

One way I could do it is by expanding my MSA2312FC by 4 more shelves (12TB at Raid 5 = 11TB per shelf). That is quite expensive though.

What storage have you seen used?



EDIT: Note to self: read PM's before posting.

Look at infotrend SAN/iSCSI/SAS products, good thing is you get a proper SAN storage unit but using the HDDs you want, a full infotrend 16 disk SAN with dual controlers could be well under 10k for 16TB(raw).

Look at span.com for storage requirements, they do the whole infotrend line.