‘Perverted’ toilet cam canned
A fight against ‘‘perverted’’ security cameras inside a public toilet block has been taken up with the Privacy Commission, eight years after the first complaint.
The cameras were put into the West End toilets, in Kaiko¯ ura, in 2010 to prevent vandalism. The same year, journalist Neale McMillan claimed having a camera in the toilets breached privacy boundaries, and took his protest to Parliament.
However, the Kaikoura District Council refused to remove the cameras, and said privacy was not being breached as the cameras could not view people in individual cubicles. The council engineer said that while people could be seen entering the cubicles, they could not be seen on the toilet.
The same engineer estimated vandalism in the toilets had dropped by as much as 95 per cent with the installation of the cameras.
Now, however, the council has conceded and has removed the equipment from inside the toilet block.
Wendy Best was alerted to the cameras by her daughter who stopped for a break in August and spotted the camera above her head.
Best said she took up the matter, only to be told people had already complained and that the council was within its rights. She was also reassured that police were monitoring the footage.
‘‘I did not find any comfort in that, and thought this was all too perverted.’’
Since August she has been checking for cameras each time she uses a public toilet. She won’t stop in Kaiko¯ura to use the toilet, nor spend her money with a council that thought it was acceptable to watch people on the toilet, she said.
Best asked for an apology as well as an assurance the cameras would be removed.
She was granted the latter, in a letter from the Privacy Commission on October 23. A council spokesperson confirmed the cameras had been moved to outside the toilet block after communications with the Privacy Commission. There had been two incidents of graffiti in the three weeks since, she said.