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Spain: Draft law on video surveillance

01 September 1996

On 13 September the cabinet approved a draft law on video surveillance, regulating the use of police cameras in public places with the purported aims of dealing with street disturbances and providing evidence for use in trials. The government took the opportunity to introduce modifications to the Law on the Safety of Citizens and to the law regulating the right to assembly. The effect is to make the organisers of any demonstration responsible for damage caused during it. In the case of illegal demonstrations, the identity of the organiser may be inferred from slogans or printed matter. The government maintains that this range of control measures will permit it to deal with the ever-increasing number of violent demonstrations in which confrontation with the police is becoming the norm. Among those who have expressed concerns about restrictions on the right to privacy which the new law would impose, on the pretext of protecting public order, is the Director of the Data Protection Agency. In his opinion such procedures represent an infringement of the concept of privacy as enshrined in statute, by authorising police and security agencies to retain recordings of the images and conversations of citizens for an excessive length of time, depriving the citizen of any means of protecting the right to privacy, and ignoring the principle of proportionality.