The City of Richmond, BC has approved Phase 1 of the Public Safety Camera System budget, which would include a $2.5 million budget for installing 4K high-resolution cameras at 10 intersections. The project is now headed to the procurement and implementation process. Richmond residents are not informed nor consulted on the City's costly budget, plans, and significant privacy risks and violations from this Orwellian proposal.

Background
The PSCS started with the city installing low-resolution cameras at many intersections. The OIPC permitted the City to implement low-resolution cameras for traffic management purposes with consideration to BC privacy laws. However, despite this clear legal direction, they decided to continue researching and recommending a new additional high-resolution camera system in Richmond. This was done with guidance by the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner, who determined in a number of orders that private information cannot be collected from citizens in the absence of an investigation, on the chance that it will be useful in a future investigation. This was stated in the safety committee meeting on December 6th, 2023, which can be viewied this on pages CS-58 to CS-70 in their meeting report here:
https://citycouncil.richmond.ca/agendafiles/Revised_Open_Community_Safety_12-12-2023.pdf

Privacy Laws
The main privacy law that the OIPC mentioned is FIPPA 26 (b), which states that "No personal information may be collected by or for a public body unless that information is collected for the purposes of law enforcement." BC laws define personal information as "recorded information about an identifiable individual other than contact information." In this case, our personal information is footage of our faces, driver licenses, and intersection user habits collected by a public body, the City of Richmond. You can view more information on FIPPA laws on the collection of personal information by public bodies here:
https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96165_03#section27

Objections
What the City of Richmond is proposing to do would be to constantly monitor all citizens on the street. Videos of all of us Richmond citizens will be constantly collected and stored by the local government. Although the footage will be regularly deleted after 10 days, it essentially won't matter if you are walking or driving around Richmond all the time to get to work or to perform other daily activities. This, among other things, will cause people to be self-aware of their behavior at all times. If the government proposes a law in the future, whether constitutional or unconstitutional, there is significant risk for misuse and abuse of authority with the PSCS for discrimination against citizens, resulting in citizens to be overly dependent and deferrent to authorities, removing civil liberties that safeguard a democratic process, justice, and the rule of law. This is exacerbated by the pan-tilt-roll-zoom technology of the cameras, which enables detailed inspection of the people and potential abuse of their power. Here is a brief overview of this technology: https://youtu.be/GwDBx7aG7Ng?t=30.

We also cannot take Council and RCMP's word that the footage will only be used when necessary and through a proper and fair court order. If they can bypass our privacy laws now, they can do it when they have the footage. Lastly, justification for these surveillance cameras are based on recent crimes including homicides, child abductions, and acts of terrorism. However, these cameras will do little to reduce these crimes. We can say this with confidence for two reasons:
 

• 1. Most of the homicides in Richmond are committed within homes and neighborhoods.
• 2. Large-scale high-resolution camera installations have already been tried in the UK. The crime reduction for this is not noticeable. You can read more about this here: https://www.oipc.bc.ca/documents/public-comments/1109

What Now?
We plan to submit this petition at the March 11th Community Safety Committee Council meeting. Sign this petition and join us in-person at Richmond City Hall (6911 No. 3 Road, Richmond) in the Anderson Room on March 11th at 4pm to watch the delegation speak about this issue to the committee. If you are unable to attend, you will be able to view the meeting live or at a later date on the City’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLarFDEh-aLyl7wEytMqbp1bxBURXZpY2j

In the meantime, Richmond residents are encouraged to call and/or email Mayor and Council: https://www.richmond.ca/city-hall/city-departments/contact/departments/council.htm

To contact specific Councillors, please click on individual profiles:
https://www.richmond.ca/city-hall/city-council/members.htm?PageMode=HTML