Smile, You’re On Camera

Video and the internet have enabled us to become virtual tourists. Though I worry that there are strange people who spend hours staring at a barely changing image of a promenade or sea front in Mallorca through the medium of a shaky webcam, to be able to drop in and take a quick view of what a place is like at any time does have some attraction.

One problem with webcams, other than the fact that the images are often not very good or the camera isn’t working, is that many of them aren’t registered. Mallorca is not a heavily surveillance society. It adheres to Spanish regulations governing data protection and privacy, but it is these regulations that webcams can flout.

Security cameras for property are meant to avoid showing the “public way”. In other words, they have to be trained on entrances, access points and so on and not, potentially, on members of the public who might be passing by. Regardless of whether the public way is being shown or not, the right authorisation and controls are needed, which come from the police and the data protection agency.

There has been an increase in public way surveillance, however, and this is as a result of the police requiring systems to watch for potential delinquency. Though this increase has caused some disquiet, the use of cameras is nevertheless authorised. Webcams often are not.

Webcams have cropped up in an unexpected context. The ongoing court investigations surrounding alleged corruption and other misdemeanours at the tourism ministry have now focussed on webcams that were put up following the ETA bombs in 2009.

It was not unreasonable for the regional government to think that ETA might just place a bomb or two on tourist beaches. The terrorist organisation had done so in the past. It was this concern that was the backdrop to the tourism ministry setting about putting up surveillance webcams on hotel sites that were trained onto the beaches.

On the face of it, this may sound like it was a sensible precaution. Sensible or not, little that was occurring at the tourism ministry or at its strategy institute, Inestur, during Miguel Nadal’s period as minister is escaping the scrutiny of the investigators.

But then, how sensible as a precaution was it? The number of webcams amounted to five in total. One of them was put up at the Nuevas Palmeras hotel, part of the Sunwing Resort, in Alcúdia. Anyone with even a vague idea of the geography of Alcúdia’s coastline will know that the beach stretches for several kilometres. The other four were in four different resorts. As surveillance measures go, they were of limited or even no use.

Apart from the fact that investigators might want to know if there was any government cash going somewhere it shouldn’t have, they also want to know whether permission was actually sought or indeed granted for the cameras to be put up. Furthermore, they want to know whether these cameras are still there, whether they are working, who exactly is looking at or controlling the images captured and whether these images have been or are being stored.

Here’s a question for you. If you are a sunbather on a beach in Mallorca, do you want a camera to be watching you? I suspect you don’t. And this goes to the heart of the privacy laws. The investigators are quite right to be taking a wider interest in the webcam affair than just any possible financial wrongdoing.

A mystery of this case is the line of authorisation. No mention is being made of the security forces. It was Miguel Nadal, the tourism minister remember, who appeared to order the cameras’ installation; for the regional government, either through the tourism ministry or another agency, to undertake the sort of surveillance which appears to have occurred (may still be), it has to refer the matter to the delegation for the Balearics at central government.

It’s all about checks and balances. Privacy and data protection are taken seriously in Spain. The contrast is sometimes made between the liberal application of privacy laws in Britain with the greater rigour in Spain and in Germany. The contrast owes much to contrasting political regimes of the last century.

It may all seem pretty innocent, sticking up a webcam and showing views of a beach or a promenade or whatever. But there are meant to be rules.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Watching You, Watching Me – Webcams and surveillance in Mallorca

The surveillance society. It is said that the UK has the highest level of surveillance in Europe. Much of it can be deemed necessary or beneficial, much of it isn’t. And so it is in Mallorca. Or rather, it isn’t quite the same, as in Mallorca – and in Spain – there is a greater level of concern for the invasion of privacy.

Video surveillance was late to catch on in Mallorca. This was not a failure of technology but a legal issue. Police cameras, such as those for traffic and speeding, were also late on the scene, for a similar reason. Officially in Mallorca, there are even now only some 7000 video cameras of different sorts that are used by the police and by security companies. As “The Diario” has reported, there are many, many more cameras, most of them unregulated. A combination of the agency responsible for data protection and the police ensures that cameras used for security purposes are correctly registered. Video surveillance of property, for example, is a matter of registration by the security company that has to comply with the need to ensure that posters, informing of such surveillance, are clearly visible and also with ensuring that the cameras do not show the “public way”. In other words, they “guard” properties, their access points and grounds.

When you take into account government buildings, banks and some of the property in Mallorca, the 7000 cameras are not really so many, and for the most part they are activated only when an alarm goes off. The officially registered cameras that are on more or less permanently are those controlled by the police. Some concern has been raised about these, for example where they are used to monitor “deliquency”. These are directed at the “public way”. Yet one can accept their role in policing and in maybe acting as a deterrent.

Another concern relates to all those other cameras. And here one is mainly talking webcams. The paper makes it clear that much webcam use is private, but much is not. Anything pointing at a street, a park, a beach is showing the public way. Hardly any of these webcams are registered. In Palma, some twenty webcams are sanctioned by the town hall. But generally, webcams are put up, pointed and there is no registration. The law may well be being broken as a result, if there is no authorisation by the data protection agency.

One has to understand that the strictness with which privacy and data protection are controlled has a historical background. In Germany, there was also a similar anxiety about cameras. If you want to know why the Germans – or at least some of the Länder – have been rather more tardy than other countries in introducing anti-smoking legislation, you have to go back to the Nazis who frowned on smoking. And for smoking, read also the surveillance and intrusiveness of an authoritarian state. It’s the same in Spain, because of Franco.

Webcams that show a resort’s promenade or beach may seem innocent enough, and in truth they are. Many, many people access them via the internet; many, many people who would consider this a purely innocent activity. But that would be to miss the point – the invasion of privacy. A not infrequent question one may come across on a forum is – are there any webcams of such and such a resort? Not for one moment would the person asking the question think this is anything other than innocent.

A webcam that shows public places, it can be argued, is being used under conditions of freedom of speech or information. Similar justification can be used for the altogether more intrusive use of cameras by Google. It’s a disingenuous argument. It may all seem just like a bit of fun, but the public webcam operates under a similar principle of intrusion, the main difference – usually – being the more fleeting and temporary nature of the privacy being intruded into.

There is the possibility that there are some unwitting double standards applied to public webcams and by those who access them. Stick a cam outside your house, down your street, and would you be quite so happy? When Google come filming, would you be quite so happy?

One can make too much of this. Personally, I am rarely in favour of anything that limits freedom of speech or information. Public webcams are rarely so intrusive as to be potentially invasive of an individual’s freedom, but I can understand the sensitivities, as they exist in Mallorca. Innocent enough the webcam may be, but it may not be quite so innocent under law.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.