Nanny cams put a focus on privacy

To tell or not to tell?

That’s the burning question for many parents when it comes to videotaping the nannies they bring into their homes to care for their children.

As video surveillance technology gets smaller, easier to conceal and less pricey, it is becoming a popular way for people to keep an eye on those who are supposed to be watching everything from their kids and homes to their pets and aging parents. So says national security expert Richard Soloway, chief executive of Napco Systems Inc., an Amityville, N.Y.-based electronic security systems manufacturer.

Interest has spiked in recent years as cellular phone companies have added built-in cameras and videotaping capabilities and as more places such as cyber cafes and high-tech hotels have opened up “where you can put your computer down on a table and scan the world,” Soloway says.

Meanwhile, experts in law, ethics, privacy and electronic surveillance are split over whether it’s right or wrong to use it in secret. Some nannies don’t exactly welcome a camera watching their every move -- or, if one is, they want to be told about it.

Legally, the decision is up to the parents when it comes to using so-called nanny cams, says Alec Farr, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., law office of Bryan Cave, who specializes in matters of privacy and technology. “It’s your home. It’s her workplace you are providing to her. She has no reasonable expectation of privacy in your home,” he says.

Although it may be legal to secretly videotape your nanny, Harold J. Krent, dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology and an expert on personal privacy, questions whether it’s ethical.

“It strikes me as unethical,” he says. “I would suggest that people put the shoe on the other foot. What if a camera were focused on you at work?”