>>It’s against the law to post cctv onto things like Facebook in the U.K.

I live in the UK and first time I'm hearing about this - it's definitely illegal to record your neighbours or members of the public without permission, but AFAIK if you are recording videos of your own driveway you can post those anywhere you like since there is no privacy issue there.

Have you got any more info about this?

Edit: let me clarify - sure, there are _circumstances_ under which it's illegal to post a video on facebook, whether it's recorded with CCTV or your phone doesn't matter. But there is no blanket ban on posting CCTV footage anywhere, and your post makes it sound like it is.

It's not illegal to record members of the public without permission in the UK. The test is mostly about whether someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, but there are all sorts of other considerations:

https://sprintlaw.co.uk/articles/can-you-film-people-in-publ...

Posting it on Facebook is the key. It’s normal behaviour in the curtain twitching communities yet is against data protection laws.

I thought the law said it’s illegal to post footage of people without their consent if it’s publicly accessible. Which means videos of some random on your driveway or some random in a public place are treated the same, but this depends on where they’re posted. This doesn’t address the fact that this seems to be generally flouted!

Would love to hear more from a lawyer on this!

you should make sure that the information recorded is used only for the purpose for which your system was installed (for example it will not be appropriate to share any recordings on social media sites)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-usi...

Data protection laws are very rarely enforced though

Just a quick reminder that in the UK these websites are purely informative in nature and are not actual legislation - they are meant to summarise to the public the nature of the laws but they are not laws themselves. Another good example is the .gov website that says ebikes can have a maximum power output of 250W, while in reality the legislation around ebikes(pedelecs) says the average output measured as described in the relevant industry measuring standard over a period of 30 minutes has to average out to 250W, maximum peak output is actually unlimited. It's an example of authors of the website trying to simplify it a little bit too much so the website isn't 20 pages long. I'm not saying this page you linked is wrong - just that everything you read on there has to be taken through the lens of "this isn't actual legislative text, it's a simplified summary".

>>(for example it will not be appropriate to share any recordings on social media sites)

Again, that's not what the legislation itself says and it's not so black and white. Posting a video from your own driveway of you parking your car would be perfectly legal even if taken from your own CCTV system. Posting a video of a postie that comes to your door every day for no reason other than to identify them would be not.

Laws are not code

> Once something illegal is culturally accepted it’s very difficult to remove, it requires a cultural shift.

I agree. And that's sensible. We don't want the law and culture to diverge too much. The former is meant to serve the latter.

But I do still think it would be possible to start going after the suppliers of the services.

> The former is meant to serve the latter.

Bear in mind europe is known for millennia of pogroms and ethnic cleansing (like, I'm sure, many other parts of the world). Sometimes the culture must bend towards the needs of a stable culture.

> Bear in mind europe is known for millennia of pogroms and ethnic cleansing (like, I'm sure, many other parts of the world). Sometimes the culture must bend towards the needs of a stable culture.

Of course. I'm absolutely not saying that culture shouldn't bend. I'm just saying the law must bend to follow culture to some degree.

And let's be clear: it wasn't a change of law that ended the millennia of pogroms and ethnic cleansing. It was culture that changed. Once culture was enough changed for enough people, the law followed and took care of the stragglers.