You may know the feeling - you get back to your pristine car in the supermarket carpark to find a ding in it that wasn’t there before. There is no note, no indication of who dented it. If the damage is bad enough, you may want to get the CCTV footage of the carpark to see who damaged the vehicle, to assist with getting your excess on your insurance policy waived.
Unfortunately, under the privacy laws in New Zealand, this is unlikely to happen. This free to read article in the NZ Herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/woman-left-400-out-of-pocket-after-supermarket-refuses-to-share-cctv-of-carpark-crash/RSJP4CS5IVCFDJSIAPDJRWUEHI/ explains how a women asked the supermarket management for the CCTV and was told that they could not provide the information as ‘any CCTV footage of a customer or staff member is classified as ‘personal information’ for the purposes of the Privacy Act 2020’.
The supermarket management said that they would give it to police if an officer requested it, and was told that the police don’t investigate carpark incidents and that too much paperwork was required when they were already busy with other jobs [understandable].
The Privacy Commissioner has since commented on the situation. It too was published in the NZ Herald as a free to read article https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/michael-webster-we-can-protect-privacy-and-still-get-to-the-bottom-of-a-traffic-prang/QQLRZBJMGZDVTHTIGS6RNQJLJE/.
It is important to understand that the Privacy Act requires people to only use the information collected for the specified purpose that it is being collected for. The rules apply to Moneyworks as an entity and our team, but also to the supermarket operator.
The Privacy Commissioners comment is worth looking at, as he outlines a situation where CCTV information was provided by a hotel to someone who asserted that they had lost their pet and could they check the system to see if they could find the pet. In this case, the pet didn’t exist and the person was checking on a partner who was suspected of cheating, and that person then used that information to stalk the person that their partner was in the room with.
Although it is frustrating that you can’t get recompense for someone damaging your property, this is weighed up against our important right to privacy.
