CCTV. access and policy

[chris_uk]

Hi all,

 

I was hoping that anybody would be able to share what your school currently does with regards to CCTV access? It seems to be a very political topic here with regards to who has access. Would anybody be willing to share the your schools CCTV policy?

 

Many thanks

 

Chris

[ITGURU]

Hi

It's always been the NM who has been in charge of the CCTV here especially now it's an IP CCTV system.

Site staff have been shown how to use it should it be needed outside my working hours but they always end up coming to me if the need any footage.

usually if I have to supply any footage to the police it goes in an evidence bag and have to sign your life away on it!

[Sagima]

Here it's the Data Protection Officer (bursar) and to whomever whoever he delegates that to, currently The Head of IT and therefore to the rest of us in the department (mostly me) when the boss doesn't want to do it. Which is never unless he's out of the office - he finds the cctv system fascinating and it's why I think we ended up with it last year rather than estates who looked after it for years but hated it.

 

SMT are allowed to request footage for themselves or anyone else but the resons for it are logged and we put the vieo somewhere we can get rid of it if no action is pursued from it.

 

We've only once had to hand any to the police - our front door camera accidentally caught a burglary across the street

[Garacesh]

I'm basically in charge of it here. IT Manager also has access to the cameras, but staff always ask me, so it's basically gotten to the point that it's "My job" now. Only other member of staff that can access playback is the Head. A few members of staff can view live feed but not playback. It's all recorded in policy, and policy states any playback access must be recorded, so I keep a book of who made an access request, when they made it, who authorised it (any member of staff can look, but a member of SMT has to sign it off first), what cameras we viewed and what times we viewed on them.

 

Sometimes footage is exported. If it goes to a staff members documents it's not encrypted, but they're instructed to not let it leave the network. If I had footage over externally (police, for example) it gets encrypted.

[TechMonkey]

Can I check, do all of you have that set out in a policy or is that just how it happens?

[Garacesh]

Ours is set into policy.

 

tl;dr:

Only members of the IT Team and the Head get access to playback.

Some members of staff are able to view the live feed, permission granted as required.

All members of staff must have the request to view playback signed off by a member of SMT. (SMT can self-sign their own requests.)

All access must be logged. Date-time of the request, who requested, who authorised, what cameras were viewed and what time and date footage was viewed from.

Any footage exported outside of the network must be encrypted as per DPA.

[Sagima]

Our policy is being amended slightly (to better align job titles and roles) but it's generally the same as what it was. It's publicly available on our website - I'm not sure if it has to be or not

[CyberDrac]

Just be aware that in consultation with the ICO we established that for an establishment of 1300 students and 200 staff they were unhappy with us having as many as four people with access and would have preferred less.

[Garacesh]

Just be aware that in consultation with the ICO we established that for an establishment of 1300 students and 200 staff they were unhappy with us having as many as four people with access and would have preferred less.

Do you have cameras in classrooms? This hasn't been an issue for us, but we only have them in open spaces so there's no possibility of using them 'against' a member of staff.

[CyberDrac]

Do you have cameras in classrooms? This hasn't been an issue for us, but we only have them in open spaces so there's no possibility of using them 'against' a member of staff.

That's without cameras in classrooms, only public spaces (internal and external) and shared work spaces (what we term breakout spaces.

I don't believe that the ICO were concerned about who that might be used against purely the numbers who had access.

[Garacesh]

Well that's just stupid. 4 people seems reasonable. Geez, 1500 users, I can imagine your IT team being 4-strong depending on what you do, and it would make sense for the IT team alone to have access.

[sonofsanta]

Policy & Request form from our school, which has been in place coming on 4 years now, approved by governors twice (i.e. it was re-approved after two years) and has never caused any trouble:

 

Closed Circuit Television Policy V1.1 June 2014.docx

Appendix 1 - Request Form.docx

 

We have three designated people for a school of 1200 pupils & ~150 staff, for 15 cameras all situated outside purely for crime reporting. Practically speaking the site manager (one of the three) always comes to us anyway, so it's me and one of the technicians who know how to use it.

 

Any footage I export, I keep in a TrueCrypt volume.

[muppet]

The only people to get playback here are the Executive Head, the Operational Head, the Site Development Officer (SDO) and me.

The SDO and I are the only ones allowed to produce and document evidence dvd's / footage, but in reality it's just me!!

Live feed can be viewed by the rest of Senior Team, the Site Team and certain members of the Admin Team.

 

Our policy basically states the above but it does need to be updated to include role and title changes within the senior team.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Hi

It's always been the NM who has been in charge of the CCTV here especially now it's an IP CCTV system.

Site staff have been shown how to use it should it be needed outside my working hours but they always end up coming to me if the need any footage.

usually if I have to supply any footage to the police it goes in an evidence bag and have to sign your life away on it!

 

Yup same as this here!

 

Not even SLT or the head have access to it.