In this edition of Richmond Stories, the Richmond Sentinel sat down with Kyla Lee, an accomplished criminal lawyer, author, and educator to share some of her insights on the City of Richmond’s surveillance cameras used at intersections.
“So the sort of perspective behind the pro privacy advocacy position is that people have the right to move about their daily lives in society free from state surveillance. I mean we expect that in a free and democratic society which is why we have privacy laws. When it came to this particular instance in Richmond the city went too far in part because it doesn’t have a law enforcement mandate but it was doing this for the purposes of carrying out law enforcement activities. Right. And in addition, there was inadequate notice given to people that they were actually being filmed at that location. People didn’t have the opportunity to opt out of the filming. Whereas with many data collection incidents where a corporation or a city is collecting your data, you do have the power to opt out.”
