Cops Invading Your Privacy For Drinking At The Pub

The plan is to identify potential trouble makers before they hit the streets, but is it an outrageous breach of privacy?

Publicans are outraged and want the practice stopped.

Next time you are enjoying your favourite frothy, be warned - you could be sharing it with an undercover cop, wired with the latest hidden camera technology, and recording the moment they deem you're too drunk for another drink.

In Victoria, it's a tactic being deployed by the Razon Taskforce - a division of the police that controls liquor licences.

They use the secret surveillance to prosecute pub owners for serving alcohol to patrons deemed to be drunk. And if one force is doing it, you can be assured others around the country are soon to follow.

“They are trying to make a safe place for everybody, and I'm happy with that too - you know I don't want drunks in the bar, but it's very difficult to monitor,” pub owner Michael Giacomi said.

Giacomi knows how hard it can be to determine exactly when someone has had too much to drink.

“In the bar someone can be beyond .05 and still behave responsibility - not fall over, not trip, not slur - but can’t drive a vehicle. So we are not in a position to take accurate readings like that, we just have to monitor people's behaviour and sometimes that's a tough call,” he added.

Brian Kearney from the Hotels Association says it's further proof that we are becoming trapped in a ‘nanny state’ with no one required to take responsibility for their own actions.

“There's far more value in a cooperative approach that involves both the police and customers and the licensee working together to address problems of concern, rather than undercover, heavy handed, surreptitious interventions by police,” Kearney said.

Civil Libertarian Professor Spencer Zifcak claims the police are more than playing dirty.

“It is a really significant invasion of people's privacy,” Professor Zifcak said.

He thinks that they're using tactics usually reserved for undercover stings on serious offenders - and that's an invasion of privacy.

“I can entirely understand that if police are investigating serious criminal offences they may want to use technology like this, but not in restaurants, pubs, clubs and so on. People don’t expect that, and they ought not to have to put up with it,” he said.

Professor Zifcak is now calling for the laws around the use of hidden surveillance cameras to be tightened.

“People should be able to go for a drink in the pub and not think that they're being secretly videoed on camera for purposes about which they know nothing.”

When contacted for a response, Victoria Police exercised their rights and choose not to appear on camera - a choice now out of your hands when it comes to them videoing you at the local pub.

“It is not producing many results in terms of interventions that are resulting in successful prosecutions. More often than not it is just interrupting the proper management of the venue on the night,” Giacomi said.

“The better the technology becomes, the more likely it is that privacy invasions will occur, and that’s why we have to reform the law to keep up,” Professor Zifcak concluded.