'Perverted' council camera in public toilet removed after Privacy Commission complaint

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

The 'view' from the camera in the public toilets.

A mother's fight against 'perverted' CCTV cameras inside a public toilet block has been taken up with the Privacy Commission, eight years since the first complaint.

The cameras were put into the West End toilets, in Kaikōura, in 2010 in an attempt to prevent damage and vandalism, which had been an issue for the council.

The same year, journalist Neale McMillan claimed that having a camera in the toilets breached privacy boundaries, and took his protest to Parliament.

However, the council at the time refused to remove the cameras, and said privacy was not being breached as the cameras could not reach people in individual cubicles.

* Kaikoura's CCTV presence grows**

The council engineer said while people could be seen entering the cubicles, they could not be seen on the toilet. The same engineer estimated vandalism in the toilets had dropped by as much as 95 per cent with the addition of the cameras.

Now, however, the council has conceded and has removed the equipment from inside the toilet block.

Wendy Best was alerted to the cameras by her daughter, Tanisha, who stopped in the seaside town for a break in August and spotted the camera above her head.

Best said she took up the matter on her daughter's behalf, emailing the council only to be told people had already complained and that the council was within its rights. She was also reassured that police were monitoring the footage.

'I did not find any comfort in that, and thought this was all too perverted.'

Since August she had been checking for cameras each time she used a public toilet. She would never stop in Kaikōura to use the toilet, nor spend her money with a council that thought it was acceptable to watch people on the toilet, she said.

Best asked for an apology from the council, as well as an assurance the cameras would be removed. She was granted the latter, in a letter from the privacy commission on October 23.

A Kaikōura District Council spokesperson confirmed the cameras had been moved to outside the toilet block after hearing* from the privacy commission. There had been two incidents of graffiti in three weeks since the cameras were moved, she said.

The council would discuss its existing town-wide camera network to work out a policy, including who would view and keep the footage, as well as signage and education, she said.

'The aim is to provide better security for businesses, residents and tourists. Currently the only people to access the footage regularly are the police, and that's only when a crime is suspected to have been committed.'

* The Privacy Commission did not 'order' the removal of the cameras as stated in an earlier version of this story.