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Illegal or iLegal?

The scene is set for a groundbreaking iLegal conference in October.

Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to two of the speakers earmarked for the iLegal conference, being held on 25 October 2011, about the proposed content of their papers.

Helaine Leggat (B.Iuris, CISSP, CISM, CIPP, CIPP/IT) is the only lawyer in South Africa with international credentials in information security, governance and privacy. Her paper is entitled: “The impact of recent legislation on CCTV; how it affects you and what you should be doing to safeguard yourselves, your information, your companies and your prosecutions”.

Helaine Leggat

Leggat pointed out that people need to be aware of older legislation as well as newer and proposed legislation pertaining to issues impacting on the use and supply of CCTV equipment and services. Her presentation will unpack the legislation that has a direct and indirect impact on the supply and use of CCTV technology and services.

The use of CCTV amounts to a limitation of the right of privacy, a right entrenched in section 14 of the 1996 Constitution of South Africa.

“The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2002 (RICA) is the most important statute relating to how one’s Constitutional right to privacy may be limited,” said Leggat.

“This Act is among the least understood and most poorly implemented. With fines up to R2 million and 10 years imprisonment for the system controller, defined in the Act as the MD or CEO of a private sector company or MEC or HOD of a public sector organisation. It deserves serious attention by all users and suppliers of CCTV equipment and services. In summary, RICA determines how legal monitoring, more specifically, the monitoring of live data (while travelling over a telecommunications system) may take place. RICA is a complex piece of legislation affecting various parties including fixed and mobile telecommunications service providers, Internet Service Providers, employers, employees and individual natural persons outside of the employer-employee relationship. The right and limitation of privacy is also governed by the common law, developed and interpreted by the courts over many years. The latter recognises inter alia the important issue of the reasonable and legitimate expectation to privacy.

She pointed out that more recent legislation impacting upon the CCTV industry includes the Consumer Protection Act which seeks to protect nine consumer rights, one of which is the right to privacy and new company legislation.

Proposed legislation, not yet law, which will affect the industry, includes the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Bill and the Protection of Information Bill. Once promulgated and in force, POPI will require organisations to implement, amongst others, measures to ensure the use, access to and security of personal information.

“One cannot consider any one of the laws in isolation. One needs to be cognisant of and acknowledge the fact that they are connected. Equally, in the assessment of compliance and risk, one needs to include the adoption of standards, codes of corporate and information governance, industry codes of conduct and best practice,” Leggat concluded.

The complex, dynamic legislative and regulatory environment in which the CCTV industry operates demands constant awareness and attention to detail.

Keeping the heat on

“How best to integrate thermals into a system to add value to the protection systems and detection and gathering evidence” is the title of the paper presented by Brendon Cowley, business development director at C3.

“Industry is used to looking at good quality video images when they are taken in daylight hours, or alternatively with good lighting being available,” said Cowley. “However, this is not the case where lighting is poor or CCTV footage is acquired at night. Interestingly, this is applicable in about 80% of the cases, when criminals use cover of darkness to cover their crimes.”

Cowley said that by using modern infrared imaging systems, one does not require a light source. “This naturally gives companies and individuals using thermal technology the element of surprise, since the criminal thinks he is undetected.

“By combining thermal technology with video analytics, not only can companies operate in covert mode, but they also remove the human error involved in trying to monitor banks of screens,” Cowley explained.

Cowley will be presenting a number of case studies using actual thermal imaging feeds recorded during monitoring exercises over the past five years.

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