Vancouver city council passed a motion Wednesday granting police access to the city’s traffic camera network.
The motion was put forward by ABC councillors Peter Meiszner and Brian Montague and passed with one councillor in opposition.
The motion report suggests that the access to traffic camera networks by the police could enhance the police’s operational capabilities.
“Real-time integration and access to the City’s traffic camera network by the Vancouver Police Department could significantly enhance the VPD’s operational capabilities by providing real-time visual information that allows for a more effective and efficient deployment of police resources to incidents as they occur, not only for quicker response times but also for more informed and effective decision-making in critical situations,” it says.
Council heard from various speakers both in support of and against the motion.
Nina Taghaddosi, a speaker at the council meeting who says she is a Registered Social Worker in B.C. spoke in opposition to the motion. She says that police having this kind of access to cameras is not ideal.
The social worker says that traffic cameras are meant to monitor traffic patterns and not to collect personal information.
“When people are in public space, we still have a fundamental and constitutional right to privacy,” she said.
“Police powers to search people are limited to certain situations, and especially by the need to obtain a warrant from a judge, we’re very concerned that it’s unconstitutional to provide the police with unlimited and unsupervised access to the city’s video surveillance network.”
Taghaddosi also mentions that for decades, human rights organizations in Vancouver have been pointing out that CCTV cameras endanger people living and working in public spaces, particularly in the downtown East side. She said, “Gentrification has resulted in abysmally low availability of safe and affordable housing and shelter options,” meaning only those with money have the rights to privacy.
“We have to acknowledge the high level of stigma and criminalization towards people who rely on public space for their survival when we consider that increasing police’s access to public surveillance tools,” she said.
On the other hand, there were various speakers who spoke in favour of the motion because they felt it would enhance their safety in public.
According to the motion report, the city of Vancouver currently has 221 cameras, and right now, traffic footage is not accessible to the police, and live feed from traffic cameras is not recorded and stored.
Councillor Montague thinks that that’s very strange. During the council meeting, he talks about how during a traffic incident the police weren’t able to use any footage to find out what really happened.
“They felt it would be extremely valuable, I, unfortunately, had to tell them that that evidence doesn’t exist,” he said.
“The police have tools at their disposal that are far more intrusive than what we’re asking them to be allowed to use here…. in order to make our streets safer for everybody.”
A Vancouver criminal lawyer says it is ‘incredibly disappointing’ to see this motion pass
In an interview with 1130 NewsRadio, Criminal Lawyer Kyla Lee with Acuman Law, says the city passing this motion is “incredibly disappointing,” because it brings up issues under the Criminal Code of Canada.
“The government has already prohibited police from essentially using electronic equipment to monitor and surveil people,” she said.
Lee says there are already provisions in place where police can obtain a warrant if they want to engage in any electronic surveillance of individuals.
“Essentially, what the Vancouver Police are doing, with the approval of city council, is bypassing provisions of the Criminal Code that are designed to protect individual privacy rights and using city installed traffic cameras to justify incursions into privacy.”
She says the implications of something like this have never been seen before and could be massive.
“This could mean that police officers without any even suspicion that somebody is engaged in criminal activity, can monitor their whereabouts, can monitor who they’re interacting with, and can even eavesdrop on private conversations for the purposes of determining whether or not a crime might be committed or might be about to be committed, or might have been committed,” Lee said.
The criminal lawyer says this going to be used disproportionately against marginalized people in the community, such as “members of the unhoused community, drug users, Indigenous people, black people and racialized people.”
Lee says this is the kind of thing you don’t see in Canada normally, and it represents a “sad state of where things are with City Council in Vancouver and the ABC majority.” She says the party’s close relationship with the police department is the reason they’re given this kind of “unprecedented level of power” to interfere in people’s privacy.
“This is something that can be walked back if enough people are concerned about it. I also hope that civil liberties organizations and public interest groups in Vancouver are going to be keeping track of the way in which this data is being used by the Vancouver Police Department,” she said.
Lee says people can monitor this by conducting a freedom of information request to the police department and the city separately to figure out how this data will be used.
She says the balance between “public safety and the need to prevent crime from happening” and investigating ones that have occurred is important, and that’s why there are provisions in the Criminal Code that allow for these processes where police can follow with judicial authorization and act when the court deems appropriate for them to do so instead of “seeking a workaround that upsets the balance between personal privacy and protection of the public.”
-With files from Benjamin Bouguerra.