Privacy rights and public spaces: CCTV and the problem of the "unobservable observer"

This article examines a number of questions (i.e. privacy as a civil liberty; conventions of anonymity; and identity and motive – the problem of the "unobservable observer") and the possibility of developing a coherent framework for thinking about individual privacy rights in public spaces. In particular, it considers whether CCTV surveillance represents a special or unique threat to such rights and how the law should begin to approach the issue of regulation and control. Whether we like it or not, public area surveillance technology is now a fact of life, and there is a pressing need for us to reconsider many of our assumptions – legal and ethical - about the nature and importance of privacy rights.