The rollout of the $1 million project to cover the CBD and wider city is expected to begin in November.
At an Invercargill City Council Infrastructure Committee meeting on Tuesday, some councillors voiced concerns about citizens’ privacy and the sharing of data with third parties.
Invercargill Deputy Mayor Tom Campbell said the report already dealt with some of his privacy concerns, but questioned how long the data would be secured by council.
"[The report] says it will be stored securely for no longer than is necessary to achieve its purpose, which implies it could be forever," he said.
Council chief risk officer manager Andrew Cameron said the storage issue was being grappled with; the current system did not create a lot of data, and it was also not kept for very long.
"Obviously as we add more cameras, add more detail in those cameras, the storage and all those issues will need to be addressed as part of that — and then we’ll have to make some hard decisions around what is an appropriate time to keep [the data], how much money do we want to invest in storage."
Council chief executive Michael Day said under the Privacy Act, there would be times when council was obligated to hold certain information for an indefinite time.
"That could be in relation to whether there is some act that has been filmed through those particular cameras that require us."
Mayor Nobby Clark said council was "a little bit light on how we share particular information when it is requested".
"How easily would the police get access to the information if there was an incident in town?
"Or would they have to put in a request form and wait for someone from council to come galloping in and open up the system and then share the information?"
He also questioned what guidelines were available for sharing information with third parties.
There were a few gaps in the document that still needed to be worked through, Mr Clark said.
"I think most people in the community would like to have them, because it makes them feel safe, but there are still those that have the conspiracy theory that we’re an arm of some organisation that’s trying to watch everything."
Council owns 200 CCTV cameras throughout the city.
The number of CCTV cameras to be added in the upgrade has not yet been determined within the budget.
Crs agreed to consult the community on the draft CCTV Policy at a later date.
