UK headmaster in trouble over data protection

The headmaster of a UK primary school in Portsmouth who planned to broadcast video images of the school playground over the Web for security purposes, is fast becoming a test case for the forthcoming data protection act.

John Mann planned to link CCTV surveillance cameras to a Web site at Portsdown primary school, so that he could look out for vandals from the safety of his home. But Portsmouth City Council stepped in, fearing that the risk of distributing images of children would infringe on the new data protection act, which comes into effect on 24 October.

The old act allowed for the use of CCTV images - provided that they were not used to search for any particular person - the new Act prevents the distribution of any CCTV footage to third parties, except in exceptional circumstances.

The UK data protection registrar, Elizabeth France, has not yet defined a new code of practice for CCTV, but she gave her opinion exclusively to Silicon.com yesterday. "I can understand the headmaster wanting monitoring of his cameras out of hours and it is probably most cost-effective to do that himself. But I think he probably hasn't thought it through.

"By linking his cameras... to a Web site, he is making that film clearly available to anyone who can access the Internet. If those cameras are running all the time then he is also causing the potential invasion of the children who would be seen at play and that is something that is just not acceptable," she said.

Portsdown Primary School, which has 500 pupils, is an inner city school in a high crime area. Headmaster John Mann told Silicon.com that he got the idea from the back of a technical manual on his new multiplexer system, which manages his CCTV video. He was stunned at the interest from officials and media and said: "All these officials were reading George Orwell's 1984 at university. They love conspiracy theories." However, he has now decided not to buy the Web broadcast software.

Ray Stead, electrical engineer at Portsmouth City Council, who spotted the violation, was horrified at Mann's attitude. "Mann does have some very, very severe problems with security but he's got to stop being so narrow-minded about the implications of technology," he said.

Stead is spearheading a campaign to bring the use of CCTV in schools under the council's own guidelines - which Stead said were even stronger than national policy.

Publicity about the case inspired security vendor Global Security to call Mann this week, offering him a direct dial, closed link to his pictures. "We probably will do this," conceded Mann.