NGO highlights lacking regulation for video surveillance

Prague, Jan 28 (CTK) - The use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) in public areas is not regulated by any comprehensive legislation in the Czech Republic, the NGO Iuridicum Remedium said Saturday.

In Prague alone, along with roughly 1800 official CCTV systems, there are tens, maybe hundreds of others, Filip Pospisil (Greens), a member of the Prague City Hall, said during a walk through the Prague centre staged by the group.

Pospisil said the law on the protection of personal data only regulates the use of the systems from which a recording was made.

The owner must have them recorded and marked, he added.

However, this often fails to happen and it is often difficult to prove that the cameras recorded any data, Pospisil said.

"One simply cannot avoid cameras in the Prague centre," Pospisil said.

The cameras of the Prague city system are able to zoom the shots both optically and digitally, he added.

Some cameras are installed at a very high altitude and can record also house windows, Pospisil said.

Shops and banks use their own systems, he added.

Pospisil said some 50 institutions had access to the data from the municipal CCTV.

"The crushing majority of them are within the municipal police, one of them belongs to the emergency service, one to the firefighters and some of them are connected with the emergency management of the city," he added.

Pospisil said the data were stored for 15-30 days.

The installation of a single camera in the Prague centre costs roughly one million crowns, he added.

Their use is skyrocketing, Pospisil said.

According to the statistics, the police used cameras in 81 cases in 2002, in 1005 cases in 2004 and in 10,661 cases in 2010, Pospisil said.

($1 = 19.142 crowns)