Hidden Camera

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A hidden camera is used to make film or video recordings of people without them noticing. The term is often used in connection with two types of television programs: With the help of hidden cameras, amusing situations are recorded for entertainment programs on the one hand, and journalistic programs are produced on the other hand, which are intended to educate the audience. However, hidden cameras are also used in other areas.

Mostly a video camera is used as a hidden camera, less often a film camera (but a camera that takes individual pictures can also be a “hidden camera”). A camera can be hidden in various ways, for example by installing it in a wall, by placing it behind a one-way mirror or by taking pictures from a great distance. Mini cameras can be hidden in bags, televisions, cell phones, clothing, and similar items. When it comes to wildlife films , one does not normally speak of “hidden camera recordings” even if the camera has been camouflaged or otherwise hidden.

use

Entertainment programs on television

In TV entertainment, hidden cameras are a prerequisite for the production of programs where unsuspecting people are confronted with absurd or funny situations that have been specially arranged for them. The reactions are filmed unnoticed by the people and then shown to the audience. Often a decoy leads a candidate to an embarrassing or amusing act that is filmed without the victim's knowledge . This results in the entertainment value.

In 1948 Allen Funt brought the format to television for the first time with the US program Candid Camera . (The title is a play on words, since candid camera means “small format camera”, but candid also means “open, honest”.) From 1961, Chris Howland moderated camera with caution - observations by and with Chris Howland as the first in Germany to present such a program. In Austria, Alfred Böhm presented with a hidden camera from 1969 .

The format is used worldwide. Well-known German programs with hidden cameras are fun? , Fat Trap , Bad Girls , Comedystreet , Para-Comedy , The Hidden Camera ( ZDF 1994-2003, initially under the title Voll caught ; new edition since 2016 The Hidden Camera - Prominent Trapped! ) Or The Comedy Trap . International productions include Scare Tactics , Naked & Funny , Teleboy , Trigger Happy TV , Videomatch or Punk'd . There are also numerous other programs with similar content. In some of these programs, the alleged “victims” of the films are informed in advance about the recordings, which means that it is often only suggested that videos were recorded with a hidden camera.

Due to cultural and legal differences, the format has developed slightly differently in many countries. This is how the majority of the internationally produced clips are created with people arriving at the location by chance or those who are searched for in newspaper advertisements or the like via false information, the cover story . It is often common practice not to inform victims of their participation in the prank, especially if the recordings are in a crowd or if the victims leave in anger. In Germany, the victim must be fully informed after the recordings and asked for permission to broadcast. Participation in the television show is often offered. Prominent people are also often victimized.

Secret recordings to educate the public

Hidden cameras are also used for journalistic reporting on television. This tool is used to document dubious business practices, for example when dishonest craftsmen carry out unnecessary repairs on electrical appliances that are actually not defective. Another example are fraudulent tricks that are tried out on unsuspecting people and filmed with a hidden camera (of course with subsequent clarification and return of the fraudulent amounts of money). The recordings are then shown to warn the audience. The ZDF series Caution Trap was based on this concept . which aired for 37 years (1964-2001). Where the protagonists of such secretly shot recordings do not agree to broadcast, faces are made unrecognizable and dialogues are repeated.

In investigative television journalism, the hidden camera has become an important tool for documenting scandalous conditions or criminal activities. It is regularly used by programs such as Report Mainz , Monitor , Kontraste or Frontal21 .

Organizations and private individuals also shoot educational films with hidden cameras. In 2014, for example, a 24-year-old actress in New York documented the number of times she was molested by men while walking the streets of the city, with her boyfriend filming the scenes with a hidden camera. The resulting two-minute video clip was published on the Internet and received more than 40 million views within one year. The action was initiated by an organization that campaigns against everyday sexism. The video was imitated and parodied several times under different conditions.

Animal rights activists have often filmed with hidden cameras to draw attention to violations of animal welfare: in factory farming , in breeding operations, during cattle transport , in poaching or in laboratories for animal experiments , in circus animal husbandry and in zoos .

Other areas of application

Hidden cameras are also used by secret services and the criminal investigation department. Private detectives use them as a last resort to solve crimes such as theft , embezzlement and damage to property , but not to spy on private life.

Surveillance cameras are either visibly mounted or implemented as hidden cameras , depending on the environment and purpose. If a sign with a warning such as “This area is under video surveillance” indicates otherwise inconspicuous surveillance, it is no longer a hidden camera as defined, since the reader is informed of the video recording.

Hidden cameras are also occasionally used in the private sector.

Some voyeurs try to satisfy their urges with the help of a hidden camera. There are also criminals who try to use secret recordings for blackmail or coercion .

Hidden cameras are also occasionally used to monitor speed violations in traffic.

Legal situation

In principle, arranging and filming funny situations is allowed. However, certain types of situations are not permitted or not desired in the respective legal area. In addition, certain situations are not possible that affect legal provisions, including harassment of the general public or those that contradict ethical and religious values. Each country has its own regulations, which also differentiate between the production of the clips and their broadcast.

In Germany it is forbidden for legal reasons to bring people into potentially dangerous, feigned dangerous or defamatory situations, even if they subsequently consent to the video recording. Fictitious confrontation with macabre objects, for example, is not forbidden, but undesirable.

In 2015, the European Court of Human Rights overturned a ruling by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court from 2008 that saw no justification for covert video and audio recordings in investigative journalism .

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Damage from the pranks

In principle, harm to the “victims” or third parties is not permitted. In 1997 the Munich Higher Regional Court dismissed the complaint of a newspaper that reported on its front page about a satellite impact simulated by a "hidden camera". This report had to be revoked the following day. Since this report was the result of insufficient research by the newspaper and not primarily the result of deception, the court dismissed the lawsuit.

Personal rights

The publication of secretly made recordings without the consent of the person concerned violates personal rights in Germany and is not permitted. It is true that in specific individual cases the general public's interest in information outweighs the personal rights of the person concerned if, for example, "the importance of information for informing the public and for forming public opinion clearly outweighs the disadvantages that the breach of law for the person concerned and the validity of the legal system entails ".

In cases in which the recordings are not made in public, even making them can be punishable under § 201 and 201a StGB. If the victims are brought into a comical or embarrassing situation, this can also be an inadmissible violation of personal rights up to and including an insult that is punishable under Section 185 of the Criminal Code.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Example: trade in nursing patients uncovered (Report Mainz, 2012)
  2. ↑ Example: Business with terminally ill patients: The booming intensive care market (Monitor, 2016)
  3. ↑ Example: dumping wages in the mail business (Kontraste, 2013)
  4. ↑ Example: The pharmaceutical cartel (Frontal 21, 2008)
  5. ↑ Actress from famous 'Walking in NYC as a Woman' viral catcall video files $ 500K lawsuit against makers of video nydailynews.com, July 14, 2015
  6. ↑ 100 stupid sayings in ten hours spiegel.de, October 29, 2014
  7. ↑ For similar videos and parodies see the article in the English Wikipedia , section Response Videos .
  8. ↑ Factory farming: Haudraufundschluss faz.net, December 20, 2014
  9. ↑ As an undercover agent in the fight against factory farming broadly.vice.com, December 22, 2016
  10. ↑ Killed piglets: Hidden cameras document massive violations of the law in the piglet breeding company Deutsches Tierschutzbüro eV, press release, June 7, 2017
  11. ↑ With a hidden camera. After illegal recordings: hatchery closes operation agrarheute.com, April 12, 2018
  12. ↑ Animal transport in Canada: 52 hours without food and water deutschlandfunkkultur.de, May 10, 2016
  13. ↑ With a hidden camera behind the scenes of the fur mafia ostsee-zeitung.de, October 10, 2015
  14. ↑ Gillian Anderson puts controversial video about animal experiments at Covance on her website Press release from PETA Germany eV, June 9, 2005
  15. ↑ Massive animal cruelty in the Circus-Krone-Zoo peta.de, April 2012
  16. ↑ Brutal recordings from Hanover Zoo: Zoo director defends elephant training spiegel.de, April 5, 2017
  17. ↑ Killer set on husband spiegel.de, July 11, 2013 (video shows a woman hiring a contract killer)
  18. ↑ Mafia in Italy: Police record mafia ritual on video berliner-zeitung.de, November 19, 2014
  19. ↑ Do detectives use a spy camera? Blog on privatdetektiv.de
  20. ↑ Hidden camera: Rabbi secretly films dozens of naked women welt.de, February 20, 2015
  21. ↑ Judgment: Dentist secretly filmed dental assistants in the locker room heilpraxisnet.de, November 21, 2017
  22. ^ Extortion in court: three million for a sex video Abendzeitung-muenchen.de, July 31, 2016
  23. ↑ Spanner from Nordenham films woman in the toilet and blackmailed her nord24.de, February 8, 2018
  24. ↑ Photo documentation on radarfalle.de
  25. ↑ Hidden camera: Court of Justice gives "Kassensturz" law srf.ch, February 24, 2015
  26. ↑ OLG Munich judgment of December 5, 1997 (21 U 3776/97) ( Memento of August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  27. ↑ Christian Schertz: The protection of the personality from secret image and sound recordings . Archive for Press Law, 2005, pp. 421–428.
  28. ↑ OLG Hamm, judgment of July 21, 2004, Az. 3 U 77/04 [1] , No. II. 3. of the reasons; here in favor of a television station which, according to the editorial team, had secretly filmed and published the inadequate conditions in a Münster animal research laboratory.