That's when good neighbours become good spies

CANBERRA: If it is not Big Brother poking his nose into your affairs, it is the neighbours spying on your every move through closed-circuit surveillance cameras.

Welcome to Sydney 2005 where, the New South Wales Privacy Office says, the rash of security video cameras across the city's suburbs has opened a whole new era for busybodies.

"The office has received a number of complaints that video cameras, ostensibly installed for security purposes, have been used for spying on neighbours' houses," its report says.

Disturbingly, pointing of CCTV cameras more often than not shows a "discernible streak of malice and more than a hint of retribution".

Camera use frequently follows some sort of spat, often made worse by the buying of more cameras to keep a close eye on surrounding houses.

"Such misuse provokes deep resentment from those on the wrong end of the camera, who legitimately complain that their privacy is being intruded upon," the office said.

"There is concern that the cameras may capture essentially private activity if surveillance is constant."

But while the number of complaints appears to indicate that Sydneysiders are increasingly turning their electronic eyes on each other, police and local councils can do nothing to stop it under present laws.

"It is difficult to recommend an appropriate remedy to those who make complaints because the activity seems to fall between the cracks of existing laws," it says.

"Notwithstanding, it is an area of dispute which ought not to be allowed to continue without some recourse being available."

The office also warned that Big Brother's nose needs constantly to be kept out of Australians' lives.

It said privacy commissioners had to resist a "general assault" on civil privacy rights - such as any attempt to misuse anti-terrorism laws, possibly to protect revenue flows.

"Governments now have a massive amount of information about all of us on databases," the report warns.

At present the databanks of such agencies as the Tax Office, the Australian Electoral Commission and state birth, deaths and marriages offices are kept separate, allowing each a narrow glimpse of an individual's life.

"But when these databases are intermeshed for whatever reasons, there is very little of what we do that remains a mystery," the office says.

"The task facing those in the community who care about [their] rights, is to scrutinise every new measure which will restrict these rights and ensure that the benefits which they are supposed to bring are worth the surrender of our existing rights."