Cam-Map WA: Should You Register Your CCTV With WA Police?

Cam-Map WA is the WA Police Force's voluntary register of privately owned CCTV systems. You tell police where your cameras are; if a crime happens nearby, they know who to ask for footage. That's the whole idea — and yet it generates more questions from our customers than almost anything else we install: Can police watch my cameras? Do I have to hand over footage? Is there any actual benefit to me?

What Cam-Map WA Actually Is

Cam-Map WA is a secure database, operated by WA Police, of voluntarily registered CCTV systems across the state — homes, businesses, local governments and schools. Registration is aimed at public-facing cameras: systems with at least one camera covering a street, footpath, park, laneway or other public area.

When police investigate an incident — a burglary spree, a hit-and-run, a missing person — they can search the register for cameras near the scene and contact the owners to ask whether footage exists. That's the mechanism. It replaces the old approach of officers door-knocking a street hoping to spot camera domes.

What It Is Not

This is where most of the worry lives, so let's be precise:

• Police do not get access to your cameras. Registration records the location and details of your system — it doesn't connect your NVR to anything. There is no live feed, no remote login, no back door.
• Registration is voluntary. You choose to sign up, and you can have your details removed.
• Handing over footage remains your decision in the normal course. Police contact you and ask. (As with anything, they can seek a warrant or order in serious matters — but that's true whether or not you ever registered.)
• It's not a public map of your cameras. The database is held by WA Police; it's not a public directory burglars can browse.

What You Provide When You Register

For a residential registration: your full name as it appears on your driver's licence, your residential address, contact details, and some details about the system — how many cameras, what they cover, roughly what quality. It takes a few minutes on the official Cam-Map WA portal, and the WA Government's Cam-Map WA service page explains the process.

Keep your details current — if you move or rip the system out, update or remove the registration, or police end up chasing footage that doesn't exist.

The Case for Registering

• It makes your cameras useful beyond your own fence line. The car break-in three doors down gets solved because your driveway camera caught the vehicle passing. Most serious volume-crime investigations are stitched together from exactly this kind of footage.
• It speeds up the ask. Police reach you while the footage still exists, instead of three weeks later when your NVR has overwritten it. (Typical home recorders keep days to a few weeks — see our guide on exporting footage for police.)
• Some councils attach money to it. The City of Kwinana has offered a $50 rebate just for registering an existing CCTV system on Cam-Map WA. The City of Gosnells goes further — its CCTV rebate requires Cam-Map registration and at least one camera covering a publicly accessible area. Details for every council scheme are in our Perth council CCTV rebates guide — and always confirm current terms with the council before relying on them.
• It's the neighbourly infrastructure play. A suburb with twenty registered systems is a genuinely harder place to offend in than one with none. You'd want your neighbour's camera registered the night your car gets done.

The Reasonable Hesitations

• You're sharing your name and address with a police database. For most people that's a non-issue; for some it matters. It's a fair personal call either way — the scheme being voluntary is the point.
• You might be asked for footage at inconvenient times. In practice requests are rare and you can decline in the normal course.
• Your cameras need to be worth registering. A blurry 2012-era analogue camera that can't produce a usable face or plate mostly generates disappointment. If your footage wouldn't help you, it won't help police — that's a camera-quality conversation before it's a registration one.

One thing registration does not change: your obligations under WA surveillance law. What you may point cameras at, and the rules around audio, are the same registered or not — covered in our WA security camera laws guide.

Our Take

For the typical Perth home or small business with a modern system and a street-facing camera: register. The privacy cost is small and well-defined, the community benefit is real, and in some council areas there's literally money attached. If you're uneasy about being on a database, don't — the system protects your own property identically either way.

When we install a new system with public-facing coverage, we'll set cameras up so at least one captures the approach/street cleanly (within the law), which is what makes both the rebate schemes and the register worthwhile.

FAQs