In addition to granting access when required, the DPA requires you to record all access to CCTV footage, and to document all requests for access, along with the reasons for any denials. Besides employees, the police can also request to be given CCTV footage. If their request meets the legal requirements, you are indeed obligated to disclose the footage.
Other than that, the DPA discourages making images widely available in general, but does allow it, as long as the decision can be justified. It also requires that images of individuals be disguised under some circumstances, such as when disclosing images to the media.
Under certain circumstances, a company can monitor its employees without their knowledge. This is called covert or targeted surveillance.
Under current guidelines , it is possible to conduct targeted surveillance, but only as part of a specific investigation, if a company has serious suspicions that employees are breaking the law, and if disclosing the act of surveillance would undermine the investigation. Prior to conducting covert surveillance, you should carry out a privacy audit and ensure that covert surveillance impacts as few people as possible.
Furthermore, the terms of the investigation must be as specific as possible. Unless it reveals information that cannot reasonably be ignored, such as evidence of additional crime or gross misconduct, any data obtained through covert surveillance which is not relevant to the investigation has to be disregarded.
For instance, if a retail business engages in covert surveillance because it suspects an employee is stealing items from the shop, it can use footage that captures such theft, or another crime. However, it cannot use this footage for assessing employee performance.
Relevant video footage is generally used as part of a disciplinary hearing. However, at that point, employees have to be granted access to this CCTV footage, and they should be given a chance to explain and contest it. There are precedents where the use of covert surveillance has been approved by courts such as the McGowan v Scottish Water case.
Once again, data protection laws do not mandate a specific retention period. Once a retention period has expired, images must be deleted. You should have one that will apply, by default, to any CCTV footage you obtain. You are allowed to retain images for longer — for instance, over the course of an investigation, which can span over longer than 30 days.
However, in this case, you have to keep the footage in a secure place, with controlled access, away from routine data. Therefore when employers set up monitoring systems they must to ensure the monitoring is legal :.
They must also tell staff why they are being monitored, and the extent of that monitoring. While it will be legitimate for employers to monitor and test their network for cyber security reasons, if employers do not tell their staff that they are using productivity tracking systems, they are basically breaking the law.
This monitoring would usually then lead to a disciplinary hearing where the employer believes the employee has breached company policies. If this targeted monitoring provides information inadvertently of other malpractice by other workers, this evidence should not be used against those workers unless it is a case of serious gross misconduct. Personal data collected through monitoring must be for legitimate purposes and cannot be used for any other purpose than originally intended.
With the GDPR becoming law on 25th May , the Information Commissioner's Office have confirmed that covert monitoring of employees can only be justified in exceptional circumstances when informing the employee involved would prejudice the prevention or detection of a crime. In the Spanish case of Lopez Ribalda and Others v Spain , the ECHR found that the use of hidden video cameras in a supermarket to monitor suspected thefts by employees, violated their privacy rights under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Five employees were subsequently dismissed, after the surveillance cameras detected them stealing or them helping other employees or customers to steal. The employees said their data protection rights and rights to privacy had been breached by the use of covert recordings.
The Spanish courts disagreed and said the dismissals were fair as the covert surveillance was justified. The basics First things first: what is a Grant of Probate? Timeframes for Probate in Victoria In order to obtain a Grant of Probate, the Supreme Court needs to be given information about the assets and liabilities of the estate, the deceased person, the witnesses to the Will, the executors and the Will itself.
Some assets will take time to cash or transfer. There is a 6 month period for challenges to be brought against the estate and executors must wait until this period expires before distributing the estate, if there is any risk that a disgruntled family member might come forward. There might need to be final tax returns for the deceased or for the estate.
Failing to wait for the ATO to process these could leave the executor personally liable for a tax bill. You might need to advertise for creditors to come forward and wait for a period of months while this advertising timeframe expires. This protects the executor if they are unsure of all of the deceased's financial dealings and creditors. It might not always be a good time to immediately cash estate assets. For example, the shares just took a nose-dive, do you still sell regardless of available price?
Need help with Probate? Our expert legal team is ready to take your call! Enter your details Your name. Email Address. Phone number. Thanks for your interest! Here's your download:. Could your Not for Profit organisation do with a "health check"? About Sharrock Pitman Legal For fifty years Sharrock Pitman Legal has made a significant and long term contribution to meeting the legal needs of business owners and residents in the City of Monash and greater Melbourne area.
Subject Select one Thank you, your submission has been received. We'll be in touch shortly. Federal law seems to allow for the audiotaping of any individual, even without his or her knowledge or consent, as long as it is not done to commit a crime.
Some states have placed more restrictions on audiotaping, and may require that everyone involved in the conversation be aware of, and consent to, the taping. Some states, like Connecticut, have implemented stricter laws for employers, fining them for overuse of audiotape recorders.
Federal labor laws also limit an employer's ability to audiotape employees by prohibiting the secret monitoring of union meetings, including audiotaping. Under federal law , employers are only allowed to monitor business telephone conversations; if they realize that the call is personal , they must hang up.
However, if you have been explicitly told not to conduct personal conversations on certain business phones, you run the risk of that conversation being monitored by your employer. Employers may also monitor your personal phone conversations if you have given them your consent. While it appears that federal law may prohibit employers from listening to voice messages , it is unclear if it does in every case, especially for messages that an employee has listened to, but not yet deleted.
Recent court cases have held that the employer may monitor voice messages. The best thing to do is to discourage anyone you know from leaving inappropriate messages on your employer's voicemail system, to avoid embarrassment or possible discipline. Voice mail and e-mail systems often retain deleted messages by permanently "backing them up" in your employer's computer system, and your employer may access these backups. Again, the best thing to do is to discourage anyone you know from leaving inappropriate messages on your employer's voicemail system, to avoid embarrassment or possible discipline.
For the most part, this depends on your employer's policy. At most workplaces there is a designated person who opens and sorts the postal mail; and in most cases such a person may accidentally, or even purposely, read any of your mail without any legal consequences.
Mail that is marked "Personal" or "Confidential," however, may not be opened by other people besides yourself, unless there is a compelling very important business reason to open it. Your employer can monitor what is on your computer screen, your Internet activity, how long your computer has been idle, what you write in e-mails and even your online chat conversations.
See our Computer Privacy page for more information. Many employers have been using devices such as GPS in company cars in order to track how fast employees are driving, how long a break they are taking monitoring how long the vehicle has not moved , and where employees are located.
GPS has also been used to track the movements and whereabouts of employees on or off the job, by placing tracking chips in cell phones. However, the search was considered unreasonable because the scope exceeded work hours.
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