ASA Adjudication on Camwatch Ltd

Ad

a. A magazine ad, for a CCTV monitoring system, was headlined "Are you paying £50k pa for this?" and showed a security guard asleep at a desk surrounded by several cans of lager and a newspaper. A monitor screen showed footage of snooker. Text stated "Site crime costs the construction industry more than £400m per year, yet sometimes it seems that nobody cares! … Camwatch offers a proven alternative, a CCTV monitoring service that actively warns off intruders and prevents construction site crime. The unique CamwatchTOWERS are always alert, look in numerous directions at the same time and are immune to coercion and bribery."

b. A second magazine ad, for the same product, was headlined "Who else is paying your guard?" and showed a hand placing a wad of £20 notes in a security guard's shirt pocket. Text stated "Site crime costs the construction industry more than £400m per year, something is going badly wrong! Camwatch offers a proven alternative, a CCTV monitoring service that actively prevents construction site crime. We are omni-present, always alert and immune to coercion and bribery … With everything included there is no one else to pay!"

Issue

DBI Support Services Ltd, who said all security operatives were licensed and monitored by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) and questioned why a security guard would be more susceptible to bribery than staff monitoring CCTV feeds, objected that the ads were misleading and denigrated security operatives.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Camwatch said they had been providing remote CCTV monitoring services since 1993 and were now the largest such company in Europe, watching more than 20,000 cameras across the UK and abroad. They claimed they therefore had considerable experience of the security industry. They said remote CCTV monitoring provided an effective crime prevention service, warning off intruders via a public address system, and as such was a natural competitor to traditional on-site security guards. They estimated that in 10-15% of their successful projects, the client had also considered, or was already using, a local guarding system. They said all the issues identified in the ads - inattentiveness, ineffectiveness, cost and being open to bribery and/or coercion - were regularly cited as concerns by their customers and that the comparisons made were truthful and fair with regard to those issues. They pointed out that the comparisons were general in nature and did not reference any identifiable competitors. They said the ads had appeared in two trade publications for the last six months and the fact that they had generated only a single complaint indicated that the vast majority of readers, which presumably included a number of guarding companies, did not share the complainant's concerns.

They maintained that there was a long history of public concern about the integrity of security personnel, so much so that the Government brought forward, and Parliament passed, the Private Security Act 2001. They sent a copy of the 2005 Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which explained the rationale behind the legislation: "The initial RIA referred to evidence of the employment of criminals in the private security industry leading to a risk of offences being committed, either directly or by improper use of inside knowledge gained through employment in positions of trust. The enactment of the Act reflected Parliament's view that such a risk was sufficient to justify a compulsory licensing scheme. This view was supported by many expressions of concern by the public." Camwatch said that showed the number of criminals employed within the private security industry was sufficient to drive a change in the law, and that it was therefore reasonable to conclude that a significant number of guards were corrupt.          

Camwatch said when the SIA implemented the licensing scheme required by the Act, they were faced with the difficulty of making the "criminality threshold" sufficiently high to be effective without making the demands so onerous that the industry could not function. They argued that the SIA had chosen to implement a licensing scheme that by design was not as harsh as it might have been, driven by the commercial realities of the situation. They added that according to Government figures the selected approach was likely to result in licenses being granted to between 13,750 and 18,200 individuals who had committed "significant offences". They asserted that despite the rhetoric from some quarters, licensing in that form could not be a panacea, and that the continuing risks arising from the employment of dishonest security guards could not be ignored by those with responsibility for protecting their companies' people and assets.

Camwatch argued that there were several reasons why their own operators were less susceptible to bribes than local guards. They said Camwatch cameras and the associated systems were anonymous, and it would therefore be difficult for thieves to track down and identify CCTV control centre operatives. They pointed out that, although Camwatch operators were able to issue challenges over a public address system, the audio circuitry was unidirectional and thieves would therefore have to call the national control centre. They added that even if thieves managed to contact the correct operator, all telephone discussions would be recorded, and that if an organised crime gang had managed to track down and bribe a dishonest operator, there was no guarantee that a particular site alarm would be routed to that operator's terminal on the night in question, because on a regular night-shift there were 15-20 operators working simultaneously and the routing of incoming alarms was essentially random. Camwatch pointed out that, should the dishonest operator manage to receive and dismiss the suspect alarm activation, there would still be a full audit trail available to the investigative team, including records of the CCTV recorded on site, the video transmitted to the control centre and the response of the individual operator. They explained that, in addition, all control centre operators had to be SIA licensed, and that the control centre itself had to conform to BS5979, which required, for example, that there must be no windows, no external walls and interlocked doors. They asserted, in conclusion, that there was no doubt that it was much easier to identify, reach and persuade (or threaten) an on-site guard to "turn a blind eye"  than it was to infiltrate a remote CCTV control centre that was equipped with sophisticated security technology and had multiple operators.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted all security operatives were now required to be licensed by the SIA. We also noted, however, Camwatch's argument that the system allowed licences to be granted to those who had previously committed a significant criminal offence, and that there was therefore a continued risk of site crime arising from the employment of dishonest security guards.  We noted it would be more difficult for thieves to gain access to employees in CCTV control centres than for them to approach an on-site guard. We considered that readers would see the images as portraying the potential risks employers could encounter by hiring on-site guards and that the risks could be lessened by using a remote CCTV system. We considered that readers were unlikely to infer that security guards generally were untrustworthy or unreliable. We concluded that the ads did not mislead or unfairly denigrate.

We investigated the ads under CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness), 19.1 (Other comparisons) and 20.1 (Denigration and unfair advantage) but did not find them in breach.

Action

No action required.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)