I live in a residential area. Is it illegal for me to install surveillance cameras on my door outside the corridor?

Although it is not expressly illegal, the parties are also obliged to tell their neighbors. Private installation of monitoring equipment by residents shall not infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others and social public interests, and the shooting angle shall not involve other residents' private space. If the surveillance camera installed by residents can capture the private space, private information and private activities of neighbors, it is suspected of infringing on neighbors' privacy, which is an act of infringing on others' privacy explicitly prohibited by law.

Legal analysis

With the improvement of living standards and the popularity of the Internet, the awareness of safety protection has gradually taken root in people's hearts. For the sake of self-protection and safety, it is reasonable for citizens to install monitoring equipment at home, but they also have the duty of care not to interfere with the legitimate rights and interests of others. First of all, the shooting angle and monitoring range need to be specially adjusted, and it is forbidden to shoot other people's private space. At the same time, it is necessary to prevent the monitoring equipment from automatically recording and storing personal information and neighbor visits. Secondly, the content that has been photographed and stored by the monitoring equipment shall not be spread to the outside world. Finally, before installing the surveillance camera, the owner should obtain the consent of the relevant owners who may be affected by the surveillance, so as not to cause psychological disgust and unhappiness of neighbors and affect the private lives of others. From the perspective of building ownership, the common parts of buildings in the community, such as corridors and stairs, can all belong to public areas. To some extent, citizens' behavior in public activity areas is open, but we can't think that "public places have no privacy". Because the public space photographed by the camera can record the information of neighbors' travel rules, living habits, social relations and so on, it belongs to the category of personal information and should be protected by law. Citizens' daily entry and exit of houses belongs to personal whereabouts. Therefore, privately recording citizens' entry and exit of houses is suspected of infringing citizens' personal information.

legal ground

People's Republic of China (PRC) Civil Code

Article 1032 Natural persons have the right to privacy. No organization or individual may infringe upon the privacy rights of others by spying, harassing, exposing or making public. Privacy is the private space, private activities and private information that natural people live in peace and don't want to be known by others.

Article 103 Unless otherwise provided by law or expressly agreed by the obligee, no organization or individual may commit the following acts: (1) Interfere with the private life and peace of life of others by means of telephone, short messages, instant messaging tools, e-mails, leaflets, etc. ; (2) Entering, taking photos or peeping into other people's private spaces such as houses and hotel rooms; (3) Shooting, peeping, eavesdropping or revealing other people's private activities; (4) Shooting or peeping at the private parts of others' bodies; (5) handling other people's private information; (6) Infringe upon the privacy of others in other ways.

Article 1034 The personal information of natural persons is protected by law. Personal information is all kinds of information recorded electronically or in other ways that can identify a specific natural person alone or in combination with other information, including natural person's name, date of birth, ID number, biometric information, address, telephone number, e-mail address, health information, whereabouts information, etc. The privacy information in personal information shall be subject to the provisions on privacy; If there are no provisions, the provisions on the protection of personal information shall apply.