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INTRODUCTION

Secret filming is no longer the preserve of a small cabal of professional journalists and private investigators. Social activists, citizen journalists and watchful members of the public are now recording more covert footage, and more important evidence, than professionals like journalists, private investigators and others. The general public itself is using cameras to stop illegal or antisocial behaviour.

They need help with that covert recording – they could often do it better. People across the UK email me at the BBC’s Panorama programme, where I work, with secret footage and audio recordings hoping we can broadcast their evidence. Currently, most of what we are sent does not prove what the sender hopes to prove. That can be because of technical issues (for example, the quality is too poor), but more often it is because someone has not sufficiently questioned why they are recording or what their footage means.

There is a second group of people whose mistakes I see when I go through the BBC’s Panorama postbag and who can also benefit from the window I am trying to open into the reality of covert recording. Police officers, social workers, media broadcasters, politicians, print journalists, as well as regulators and their inspectors too often respond poorly to secret footage. Professionals can fail to assess and interpret secret footage properly and therefore can benefit from the advice in this book.

This book contains all of the strategies, techniques and observations from the time I have spent working with hidden cameras, since 2002. I hope that sharing them will assist more people to get it right.

THE INSPECTOR’S STORY

A regional manager (whom I won’t name) for the national health and social care inspectorate of England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), spent an entire day with me at the BBC’s headquarters in Central London in 2014.

She was very polite and extremely diligent, but when she first arrived I felt something slightly odd was going on; it was hard to pinpoint exactly what, though.

The CQC had contacted me regarding one of the films I had produced, during the making of which reporter and journalist Alex Lee worked in a large elderly care home as a care worker. The care home did not realise at the time that Alex was also wearing hidden cameras and working as a journalist for the BBC.

Alex had filmed evidence of poor care being given in that facility – even one care worker apparently slapping a resident.1

The CQC came to me after the film was broadcast saying they wanted to ensure there were no further issues that they needed to understand related to the home. They said they wanted to get ‘more insight into the way care is provided’ in order to ‘help us get to the right action quickly’.

When she first arrived, though, this regional manager seemed a bit distant. To my discredit, I assumed – wrongly, as it turned out – that maybe she had been ordered to come see me, that maybe she was reluctant and uninterested.

But that was not the problem at all.

She spoke to me at length and worked through the detail of what we had found and how we had uncovered it. She worked hard the whole day. This clearly was not someone who was reluctant. The more time that passed, the warmer she got – and she wasn’t doing any of this simply to please me.

She finally cleared up the mystery of what was going on.

At the end of the day, just before she was about to go, she admitted that when she first turned up she had a settled opinion about hidden cameras: she just didn’t like secret filming.

She came to the BBC convinced that hidden cameras were a bad idea, full stop. Now, instead, she was struck by the depth of understanding we had achieved in really very few shifts working in an elderly care home. She told me she now saw that we, during our investigation, had clearly agonised about everything we did throughout our filming.

I worry about putting words in her mouth, but it seems to me that across the day she spent with me she came to understand that all secret filming is not equal, that some of it is more worthwhile – if it is done well.

This care home’s real culture had been closed off and hidden away, even to inspectors during inspections. However, the people living there – who were too often voiceless or misunderstood – and the people working there, like our undercover reporter, could see what was really happening.2

No one should be against secret filming if it is done properly. Equally, no one should be in favour of secret filming if it is done badly or unethically.

Once professionals who are involved with secret filming understand it better, they can take a more nuanced approach and identify – as I try to do every time I go through Panorama’s email inbox – which secret recordings need the most attention and action.

There has too often been a fake battle going on between those ‘in favour of secret filming’ and those ‘against it’. We need a more informed and nuanced discussion. One could well argue that proportionate and effective covert recording of antisocial or illegal behaviour should be supported by everyone, whereas indiscriminate invasion of privacy should be avoided and even excoriated. How we can inculcate good filming practices, and how to judge that distinction, is the real challenge.

In June 2015, the Royal College of Nursing’s conference passed a resolution to oppose covert surveillance. Referring to why nurses were so worried about the cameras, Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive of the RCN, said: ‘I can understand why. You are doing a job feeling like you are constantly under the microscope. It’s not a panacea to cure all problems of abuse.’3

Nurses at the College’s Bournemouth conference were reportedly told that concerns should be raised with managers instead, and were warned that footage could be inappropriately posted on social media and Twitter.

Those concerns – namely, being under the microscope, whether concerns could be resolved by complaints instead of surveillance and how any footage collected is used – are valid, sensible and reasonable. I am agreeing that those really are problems, despite being one of the country’s foremost practitioners of secret filming.

Here’s the thing though: none of that is an argument against people doing secret filming, per se. None of those points justify banning people from covert recording. The Royal College of Nursing really just pointed out why secret filming needs to be carefully considered, managed and justified.4

A more considered and balanced argument was advanced by Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, who said:

Cameras should only be used when there is good reason to suspect abuse and neglect. Every older person has a right to privacy and dignity and as most people receiving care need help with intimate personal tasks, including washing and dressing, cameras must be fully justifiable and carefully balance the rights of older people to live their lives free from surveillance. Where possible cameras should only be used with the consent of the resident, and footage should be treated as the property of the resident or their representatives, not of the home.5

The toothpaste will not go back in the tube – nurses cannot prevent technology changing their world any more than police officers, security guards, nannies, doctors and other have been able to in the past.

There is a revolution going on among people desperate to find out the truth about how their loved ones are being treated or another social ill. People are deciding that they will not wait any longer and that they will no longer tolerate being brushed off.

People are not accepting not knowing any longer.

People are taking matters into their own hands.

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

This book takes a narrative approach to the story of secret filming and assisting people in future with doing it or understanding it. In addition to providing eight chapters that contain specific instruction and advice, I also try to immerse the reader in the experience of covert investigation by offering ‘Undercover Tales’ – real-world stories of real undercover filming.

This is not a textbook; it is a guidebook, a journey into a world that for most people feels unusual and sometimes even impossible when they first step into it but which is really just our ordinary world magnified through a tiny hidden lens.

The eight main chapters cover the history of secret filming, technical advice on using proper cameras and then on using the cameras in phones, ethical guidance, the legal context, the emotional and physical costs, what to do with the footage and predictions for the future.

Chapter 1 tells a potted history of journalistic infiltration, of secret recording and covert technology.

Chapter 2 provides specific guidance on ‘proper’ secret cameras and how to avoid some common mistakes. This is a step-by-step guide for choosing a camera, installing it, using it and safely retrieving the covert footage.

Chapter 3 is a guide to using a mobile or cellular telephone to film people secretly and safely: ‘secretly’ in that if someone doesn’t realise they are being filmed, then the recording is ‘covert’, and ‘safely’ because phones are risky – they are obviously more visible than ‘proper’ hidden cameras. Phones with integrated cameras are powerful tools for social justice but can put people in danger.

Chapter 4 sets out the ethical considerations which, I would argue, should be thought through before and during any secret filming.

Chapter 5 provides a ‘beginner’s guide’ to the legal questions involved with covert recording.

Chapter 6 describes two issues that often take people by surprise and then offers advice on how to cope with them. These issues are essentially the logistical difficulties involved in doing secret filming well and the emotional costs involved with deception and recording people without their knowledge.

Chapter 7 sets out what happens after the secret camera or mobile phone camera stops filming. This chapter breaks down step by step the choices for people who have done secret filming and for people presented with their footage.

Finally, Chapter 8 looks to the future, describing the likely technological developments in covert recording that will occur over the next decade – and considers the implications for all of us.

TERMINOLOGY

There is more detail on the types of covert recording and the differences between them in Chapters 2 and 3, but it is appropriate to provide a preliminary guide to the meanings of certain key terms. I use ‘covert recording’ and ‘secret filming’ interchangeably to cover all occasions where someone films someone else without their knowledge, whether that is with a ‘proper’ secret camera or with a camera in a phone.

‘Hidden cameras’ are recording devices in which a camera and recorder have been deliberately disguised. Some secret filming is done with the cameras of mobile or cellular phones.

NOTES

1.Holt, A. (2014) ‘Staff sacking and suspensions over poor elderly care.’ Available at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27128011, accessed on 3 April 2015.

2.The care home in question says they have ‘invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in a programme to overhaul care, equipment, facilities, decor and staff training’. See Robinson, E. (2015) ‘The Old Deanery rebranded as the New Deanery as new owners invest hundreds of thousands of pounds.’ Available at www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/12903163.The_Old_Deanery_rebranded_as_the_New_Deanery_as_new_owners_invest_hundreds_of_thousands_of_pounds, accessed on 10 May 2015.

3.Borland, S. and Sinmaz, E. (2015) ‘“Ban worried relatives from filming the elderly in care homes,” argue nurses who “don’t want to be scrutinised”.’ Daily Mail, 22 June. Available at www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3134928/Ban-worried-relatives-filming-elderly-care-homes-argue-nurses-don-t-want-scrutinised.html, accessed on 4 July 2015.

4.There is more detail on specifically how and why that can be done in later chapters (particularly Chapter 4).

5.Gregory, A. (2015) ‘Nurses want spy cameras banned from care homes due to “remote supervision” fears.’ Daily Mirror, 22 June. Available at www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nurses-want-spy-cameras-banned-5931165, accessed 4 July 2015.