State Specific Question About: CALIFORNIA (CA)

No sign is necessary in CA for surveillance cameras. Capturing an image on YOUR property is not a violation of privacy. Placing a warning sign may help to scare off an intruder, but it confers NO rights legally.

The sign that you saw refers to PC 602, which forbids trespassing.

If you're going to get a monitored sign, be sure to get a real one. Burglars can surf google too. They know which monitoring services cover your area and they can spot a fake sign. Having a fake sign may make them wonder what else is fake.

If I want to use my footage of a crime being committed in court, then I need to have visible signs posted that the Property Is Under Video Surveillance. Otherwise a defense attorney will get my video excluded.

How will a defense attorney get your video excluded? I have used video in court more than once. No sign is required.

Trying to get footage excluded isn't the same as getting it excluded. Video is just as good as any other evidence so long as it was obtained under the usual rules (e.g., no invasion of privacy).

I have seen warnings in the past on this, so I'll pass it along just in case...

If you are going to say that cameras are "monitored" or "recorded", then you better make sure that is being done. If someone is attack or otherwise injured and you DON'T have anything recorded or no one was "monitoring" it at the time, you can run into legal issues if you previously said that they WERE monitored/recorded.

In other words, be careful about a sign that gives a false sense of security.

- John...

Our sign reads Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again.

I got 18 cameras online. They are professional, not an out of the box Costco setup. I've been running since the early 2000's. I am in a busy mixed use zone and next to a bank which was robbed at gun point 8 years ago. Many other minor incidents happened during the years too. I had FBI (for the bank job), and local cops here. The cops come here first when anything happens in the area. No signs needed. NEVER had anyone trying to exclude my videos from court.

From my years of experience, many for the street level criminals are too stupid and don't care if they are on camera or not.

Setting cameras properly is an art. Many people will set the cameras too high and only get hoody head shots, not direct face shots. Another common mistake is mounting the camera too far away from an that is being monitored. You will capture something, but trying to identify the subject when he/she is only a pencil eraser in size on your screen is next to useless.

John