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. 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. But that would be to miss the point - the invasion of privacy.

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.


QUIZ
Yesterday: Jonathan Meades. Today: "Watching You, Watching Me"; pretty sure we've had this song before. Think Tintin.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.