Recording cars on the street

[MrSquid 0]

Is it legal/ethical to capture cars & license plates of cars that pass by your house?

 

It's a long story as to why I would want to but here goes.

 

About 1 year ago I noticed that someone tried (but failed) to pry open my sliding door that leads out to my deck. Luckily I have always been a little security conscience and had a block of wood reinforcing it. Apparently they were too worried about making noise to break any glass and left (Lucky for me). Upon discovering this I promptly installed an alarm, put locks on the gates to my backyard and installed motion lights on all sides of my house. About 3 month ago I started setting up a GeoVision system. So far I have two cameras covering my front door and one side gate. In the near future I will be installing about 6 more cameras to cover more of my yard.

 

It doesn't take long to realize the limitation of standard resolution cameras. My two cameras’ cover very specific locations and provide some level of facial recognition. However, if someone were to be just a little outside the sweet spot (or wearing a mask), the best I could hope for would be a general description of the person. I wish 2 or 3 megapixal cameras were within my budget but they are not. Even if they were, we still have the mask issue.

 

So I am looking (perhaps incorrectly) at this surveillance system as a very limited tool. But nonetheless as an important part of a full security system.

 

In order to improve it's usefulness, in the event of a crime on my property, I would like to capture the car before they get anywhere onto my property (or faces of people before they don their mask) . Hence the idea of hiding a camera/IR illuminator in my bush by the street to capture car/pre-mask details.

 

I understand the issue of the cost to do so.

 

Thoughts?

[kg6mti 0]

My understanding is unless you are using the camera's to "peep" on someone or obtain lewd images of anyone you are ok. Anything that can normally be viewed from a public place is perfectly fair game. For example if you are on the sidewalk and take a picture of a building across the street anyone in the field of the picture can't complain that you took their picture. Another good example is at a park when there are a lot of people around you can take photo's all you want.

 

Basically as long as your intent is only to monitor your property and the access other people have to it you are ok. I don't know where you live and I am not a lawyer. You will have to consult your local laws and regulations. Everything revolves around your intent.

 

Good Luck!

[Wachhund 0]

The only thing you need to worry about when using cctv in public is illegally monitoring audio. Eaves dropping can be a nasty little offense. Anyone or anything in a public space is open game and there is no "perceived or expected privacy", other than conversation. That's why it's called being out in public. Most states are the same when it comes to this.

[cctv_down_under 0]

I can only assume the laws are different everywhere, my limited understanding of our laws is that the cameras may not view any publicly accessable area unless the camera is protecting your premises.

 

Therefore if you havea camera viewing the front of your premise, it should only view what is deemed necessary to protect your premises and I guess as above the loose translation would be that if the area you are covering causes no risk to your premise and is not part of your premise, then you could be at risk of breach of public privacy.