Video Surveillance

Video surveillance has brought a huge concern for the privacy fears. Due to recent advancement of technology there is a potential risk of video surveillance which may invade our privacy. Video surveillance is privacy intrusive. Privacy-intrusive includes a person's identity or characters such as age, gender and ethnicity. Generally it is permitted to use the video surveillance in public places which includes the workplace, shopping mall, restaurant, educational institutions, departmental store, commercial and residential building, and offices. However due to the increased capabilities of the automatic surveillance system now a days anything can be viewed and sorted out as quickly as possible whenever the need arises.

When the question comes it invades of the privacy of common people we have to judge few things. Firstly, as per the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is one type of right to privacy law in Canada, if the video surveillance is done in public it's legitimate as long as those people are being taped are informed about it. Video surveillance is mostly uses for the security purposes which are for well-being and safety of others. Most of the cases video taken from the surveillance camera is only viewed by the authorized security personal only when a crime takes place. It's solely used to allocate the criminals rather not to invade people's privacy or stalk people. Secondly, argument can be made where enough security personal is not available or such places where human presence is not possible surveillance camera can be the best option for protection of the public which can't invade the privacy of the people. Furthermore, in a public place either people are always cautious about their activities or perhaps people don't care what other people see or think about them. In this situation privacy can't be invaded anyways. Lastly, work place video surveillance is usually notified by the employer to their employees. According to a survey conducted by the American Management Association, more than half of the companies surveyed use video monitoring to prevent theft, violence and sabotage (51% in 2005 vs. 33% in 2001). In addition, the number of companies that use video surveillance to track employees' performance has also increased, with 10% now videotaping selected job functions and 6% videotaping all employees. Among firms that use video surveillance, 85% notify employees (Alice). As far the law is concern there are clear guidelines