‘What we do with our infrastructure none of your business,’ Vumacam tells JRA

The private company rolling out a contentious public closed-circuit television system across Johannesburg’s suburbs have said that the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) have no business in what they intend to do with their poles, but should simply consider and approve their wayleaves.

According to Vumacam boss, Ricky Croock, when it applies for a wayleave, his company does not require, nor does it seek, JRA’s approval of its subsequent business activities – “that is, the use to which it intends to put the poles it installs in the road reserve, once they have been installed”.

The company has approached the High Court in Johannesburg with an urgent application to declare the JRA’s decision to suspend aerial and CCTV wayleave applications as unlawful and invalid, and set it aside.

In his replying affidavit to the application by the civil rights organisation Right2Know Campaign to be admitted in the matter as amicus curiae or friends of the court, Croock argues that the JRA was not called upon, when granting a wayleave, to “approve” Vumacam’s CCTV services but “asked simply to grant Vumacam to erect a pole in the road reserve”.

He contends that once requirements in the by-laws were met, JRA was obliged to consider and issue a wayleave (permission to use public space).

“The question of whether the JRA thinks that the wayleave applicant may infringe privacy or other rights is not relevant to and is not a requirement for a wayleave provided for in the by-laws,” Croock contends in his affidavit.

But Right2Know has contended that Croock’s assertion should be interpreted as meaning that as long as one meets requirements for a wayleave, they can go on and mount whatever they wanted on the poles or erect whatever they want on public land.

The advocacy group contends in papers the proper process in this matter dictated that JRA should have set aside the approvals of the previous wayleave application by way of counter-application.

R2K’s organiser Floyd Nkosi argues that the intrusive nature of the video surveillance in public spaces required the existence of an enabling legal framework which includes appropriate safeguards to protect, among others, the rights to privacy, freedom of movement and freedom of association.

This week Vumacam brought in media law expert, Emma Sadleir, to explain why the system was not infringing on any rights, particular that of privacy.

She said in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, as soon as someone holds personal information on you, the Act spells out how long they have to store it for, how to look after it, what they are allowed to use it for, and how long it could be kept.

“The Act came into the effect in July 2020. That law has everything to do with our privacy … So that is where we are in terms of privacy law. Basically do you have expectations of privacy over what you do in the street? I would say no. Even if you did, certainly the public interest overrides it, because there will be an immense security benefit of these cameras,” she said.

She said that Vumacam cameras did not use facial recognition technology and therefore no information was attached to a specific person, which she said meant the network fell outside the realm of POPI Act.

“The only time this footage would land in public is when a crime has been committed,” she said.

According to Vumacam’s Corporate Advisor, James Mc Cormack, because no one had done this before at this scale, they found themselves in a position where there was no clarity in terms of regulations.

“So up until July this year the primary regulatory framework that we operated under, which is now POPI, was not in place. It was published law but it was not law so that for us is the primary instrument by which we hope to be governed and we think that is the very well thought out piece of legislation,” he said.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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