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I've just had a conversation with a company who are a "Security Systems and Alarms Inspection Board accredited intruder alarm system installer", who told me that their CCTV cameras and network video recorder devices cannot share our IT IP network, even with logical VLAN separation, because it would make images gathered likely to be inadmissible in court because they cannot be shown to be "evidence compliant". Instead they prefer to have their own IP network dedicated to CCTV only.

The person with whom I spoke couldn't cite a specific regulation that dictated this. In the past I have worked with other installers where the cameras where in a VLAN of the main IP network, and the network video recorder was virtualised on one of the IT servers, again with logical separation. I am now wondering if these are somehow non-compliant.

If someone can help me understand the accurate legislation here, or perhaps cite some design guidelines that would help in court, that would be great. Thank you.

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  • I think that one reason they might suggesting that is that if it's on a network managed by your IT team, the IT team could fiddle with the recordings (deleting them, editing them, adding new videos to the folder, etc).
    – nick012000
    Commented Oct 28, 2022 at 22:16
  • That’s certainly possible, but I think could be mitigated with good controls. I’d also argue that the same insider threat applies if staff members are given access to the standalone network video recorder…
    – Daniel
    Commented Oct 29, 2022 at 11:58
  • @nick012000 Nearly all evidence which ends up in a court room can be tampered with (e.g. copies of documents), but that doesn't generally prevent them being admissible. In general, Party A submits evidence, Party B is free to attack the credibility of the evidence, and the court gives weight to the evidence as it sees fit. It's possible that either the security company or the OP is using the word "inadmissible" when really they mean something like "less credible".
    – JBentley
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 16:27
  • @JBentley thank you, this sounds like the crux of an answer. If you could enlarge on the credibility point as an answer I think I could accept
    – Daniel
    Commented Nov 8, 2022 at 18:23
  • The court/jury would decide how believeable the evidence is. IT has no reason to fake evidence against some burglar. IT might have a reason or might be told to fake evidence against a specific employee that the company wants to get rid of.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 19:54

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There does not appear to be specific legislation prohibiting the production of evidence from a CCTV system that has been networked to another existing IT system, rather than being isolated to its own unique network.

More generally, the rules of evidence broadly give the courts discretion to decide what is admissable and what is not, including the power to have the authenticity of any evidence tested and proved. This is set out in Part 32 of the Civil Procedure Rules for civil cases, as well as Section 132 and Section 126 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Section 76 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 also permits the court to exclude unfair evidence.

The authenticity of evidence supplied from an audio or video recording can be proven by way of expert evidence at court. Just because the evidence came from a dual-networked system does not automatically mean it is unfair (it would be for the allegor to demonstrate that the evidence is unfair) and must be excluded, unless proven by expert evidence or other compelling facts.

In this case, I do not see the problem linking it with an existing IT network and consider that the company you've quoted is mistaken as to the law.

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  • Or looking to make a profit out of installing and maintaining a separate network…
    – jmoreno
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 17:23

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