Italy: Inspection finds breaches of CCTV surveillance rules
01 January 2005
A cycle of inspections carried out by the Italian data protection authority and a special unit of the
Guardia di Finanza (customs police) to check whether video-surveillance regulations issued in April 2004 are being implemented threw up mixed results. Checks concerning the legality of the systems that were in place, data collection procedures, the period for which images were stored, and whether the public was duly informed of the presence of CCTV, were carried out in 12 different areas (including tube stations, airports, shopping centres and boarding points for ferries) in which thousands of people pass on a daily basis.
Three of the sites were run by public bodies, while nine were privately run. The inspections found instances in which citizens were not informed of the presence of CCTV systems, such as in the metro stations in Rome and Milan, and in some buildings run by the finance Ministry. The personnel in charge of the treatment of personal data did not appear to be aware of their responsibilities, even in places where greater attention was paid to privacy regulations. Sometimes legal and illegal video-surveillance installations coexisted, as in Florence, where the systems that are under the control of the head of the local police (
polizia municipale) were deemed to comply with the regulations issued by the data protection authorities on 29 April 2004, while systems that are supervised by other bodies do not.
On the Milan metro, the issue of shared access to CCTV footage was thrown up by the fact that the company managing the service shares its footage with the police. While low-definition footage, which does not raise any data protection concerns, is sufficient to monitor areas for loading and unloading, and for embarking on trains, the police want high-definition footage for security reasons and to pursue criminal offences. This raises the issue of the scope for which surveillance systems gather data, and the ends for which they are used, as well as the issue of proportionality between the objective of the surveillance and the form which it takes in practice.
Italian Data Protection Authority newsletter 31.1-6.2.05.