Taxi Driver Online

With the recent debates regarding CCTV I thought it might be a appropriate to expand the debate a little wider and explore the legalities of CCTV under our current laws.

I'm going to start off the debate with a court ruling in respect of public outrage and decency in respect of being caught on CCTV cameras.

According to the courts CCTV sex is not a public outrage: The court ruling states an act seen only by a security camera cannot have caused an offence of indecency

I suppose when you look at it logically it is impossible to offend anything that isn't human.

In 2006 Frances Gibb wrote this in the Times.

The High Court has held that sex acts cannot outrage public decency if they are captured only by closed-circuit television and not actually seen taking place by passers-by. Keith Rose was cleared of the offence because the only witness to his sexual conduct was a CCTV camera in the foyer of a bank.

The footage was later viewed by Lloyds TSB bank manager Helen O Rourke, who then referred the incident to the police. Mr Rose was convicted of outraging public decency by a district judge at Sheffield magistrates' court but the High Court quashed the conviction on the basis that such an offence had to be witnessed, and that there had to be others actually present who could see the act.
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Regards

JD

The case above brings us on to the recent case of Senior Judge Sir Stephen Richards who was found not Guilty for Flashing due to insufficient evidence because of no CCTV footage to support the prosecution.

Frances Gibb once again explains in the Times that Sir Stephen Richards, a senior judge who sits in the Court of Appeal, has been found not guilty of twice exposing himself to a woman on busy commuter trains in October 2006. Senior District Judge Timothy Workman, who sat with two lay magistrates, ruled there was "insufficient evidence" for the charges though the complainant was praised for for her "clear, dignified and truthful evidence" . District Judge Workman also criticised British Transport Police for failing to investigate the woman's allegation promptly or adequately which meant closed-circuit television evidence from the train was no longer available.
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This case highlights the problem of time shifting were taped evidence has been erased in the due course of time because there was no allegation forthcoming or as in this case the allegation not being investigated promplty and with no policy of data storage. Something which could no doubt happen if access to data was entrusted to a single entity such as a local council with access denied to the controling Taxi driver.

Regards

JD

I suppose if CCTV evidence was used in relation to us then the offence/complaint would have already happened, and CCTV could just confirm the facts.

In the incident with the camera catching the bonking, the offence alledged was the evidence. If you see what I mean.

In other words a third party complaint, either by the driver or customer, would lead to CCTV in our cars being viewed. Whereas it was the CCTV evidence that led to the complaint in the bonking case.

So what I'm saying (eventually) is that in my perfect world CCTV evidence in cabs would only be viewed when there are reasonable grounds to view it.

Not willy nilly.

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IDFIMH

I think recording and verifying events is all CCTV can ever do because it just documents the facts as they happen. However that applies in every case and is not confined to just CCTV in cabs.



The bonking issue was to highlight the specific complaint in respect of public outrage caused by explicit acts of indecency or other similar activities. Insofar that the judiciary have decided an act of public outrage must be viewed by the public in order for an offence to be committed. The case was an introduction to the thread and wasn't meant to have any bearing on CCTV in cabs, which obviously it doesn't.



Assuming it was mandatory under statutory law to install CCTV in cabs and controled by the local council or police you would first need the foresight or awareness to realise that an issue might arise from something that happened in the Taxi. You would then have to go to whoever it was who is given the task of viewing and storing the data from the recording device and they would then have to download it and store it until such time it was safe to dispose of it?

"If" a driver did or said something to a passenger that might cause them problems in the future, should the passenger complain, then the driver is highly unlikely to pay a visit to the data controler in order to have the evidence extracted.

Under those circumstances drivers will just let the data overwrite itself under the normal cycle of events.

Besides that, if we consider the law as it stands, there is nothing a council official can do, that you cannot do yourself.



That is precisely the reason I posted that particular court case in order to point out that CCTV camera evidence has its limitations.



I suspect that will depend on how fast any complaint is recieved and acted upon. That is precisley why I brought into play the scenario on the Tube because this is a classic case where delay in processing the complaint led to the evidence being overwritten. So in your ideal world of CCTV you are going to have to recognise that hard drives or memory cards fittted in CCTV devices in cabs have a limited cycle and that could mean data being constantly over written every 24, 48, 72, or perhaps 96 hours. How you remedy that I don't know.

Regards

JD

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From memory the discs in the hard drive store info for 28 days and then re-write over it.

Maybe that's because after 28 days different data protection issues come into force. Or so I'm told.

The systems works when either the ignition goes on and/or a door opens and closes.

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IDFIMH

I'm told the footage is not admissable unless it has an accurate date and time stamp.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

I think the more accurate the time the more weight a court will give to the info.

But if the CCTV shows a bloke bashing a driver, then the time isn't that much an issue as the ID of the scum.

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IDFIMH

So if a driver does something serious then it's unlikely that the evidence will be available to the authorities?

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Mr Goody Goody .

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

It would give credence to any complaint if any info disappears.

Also it would be a breach of his licensing conditions.

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IDFIMH