Modes of legal regulation of CCTV vary greatly across Europe. Its employment is regulated by federal[ and state data protection acts. by police laws and codes of criminal procedure, by specific laws on video surveillance and furthermore special regulations for locations such as banks or sport stadiums. Also copyrights provisions touch the usage of CCTV.

In some countries strict regulation exists in regard to private CCTV systems. In other countries mainly public systems are legally regulated. However. the findings demonstrate that although the spread of video-surveillance %vas partly determined by the lack of regulation in some countries. it is not simply the case that legal regulation has limited the rise of CCTV. Since the law has served to stem the growth of CCTV in some contexts, due also to specific facts of the individual political systems, one has to keep in mind that the law also served to legalize existing practices of surveillance.

At the European level CCTV is mainly regulated in the context of privacy and data protection: in particular by Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention. the European Convention on the Automated Processing of Personal Data of the Council of Europe and the Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) of the European Union. Especially the latter. which is binding for ali member states of the Union, has influenced the national regulation of CCTV during the lasts years throughout Europe. Passed in 1995 it carne into force in October 1998 with the aim to harmonize European data protection legislation.

Although it is not in the EU. but nonetheless affiliated with the Union through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA) of 1992, also Norway has replaced its privacy legislation in lire with the EU-Directive. Similar. the accession state Hungary revised its 1992 Privacy Law in june 1999. Mainly the directive has led to a lot of similarities among the countries in regard to central definitions of terms like "personal data" or "sensitive data". "data subject" or "data controller. "data collecting" or "data processing". Signifying the political pressure towards the European national governments to update their provisions in respect of new technologies it has led to first more or less direct regulations of video surveillance in the countries.

Before to install a CCTV device check your local country laws regarding privacy!!