Society

​LAWYER VITALI NAGACEVSCHI TO CHALLENGE IN COURT MoI ORDER ABOUT INSTALLING VIDEO CAMERAS

30 octomber, 2014

Layer Vitali Nagacevschi will challenge in court the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) order on installing cameras for supervising the road traffic in Chisinau.

In an interview with Infotag, he called obvious the illegality of such practice.

“Such methods like telephone tapping, hacking of email, video surveillance are quite applicable by operations services of law enforcement agencies, when it comes to solving crimes of fixing violations. This is a normal thing for democratic countries. But I have questions to those officials, who took decisions about installing cameras. On the basis of which criteria have been selected certain criteria, where the devices appeared? Which act approves this?”, expressed bewilderment the lawyer.

According to him, the most dangerous and overloaded streets in Chisinau are Ismail street and the Calea Mosilor speedway, but no cameras are installed there.

“Video recording devices have been installed anywhere but not in the most dangerous places of the capital, where road accidents happen and people die. Thus, it can be concluded that this is done not for ensuring road traffic security at all. The second and also important moment is who and where is keeping information from cameras, who has access to it, according to what criteria and when this information is deleted?”, wonders the lawyer.

He considers that collection of information via surveillance cameras is simply used for pressure upon political and financial rivals.

“On one of the internet resources, a video has recently appeared where well-known politician Renato Usatii is smoking and talking on the mobile phone while driving a car. This is a shooting from the surveillance cameras, controlled by the Interior Ministry. How such a disclosure of information became possible? Strictly speaking, the information from video recording devices can be qualified as citizens’ personal data. Their distribution is violation of law, that is of the people’s fundamental freedoms. And I am sure that I can prove this in the court”, said the Lawyer.

After Nagacevschi’s statements, the MoI recognized that the video recording devices have been installed by order of the Interior Minister, but not by Government resolution as it should be. After this, the draft resolution on installing cameras was introduced in the agenda of the Government meeting, planned for October 29. However, the meeting was postponed.

Infotag’s dossier: A system of video surveillance of road traffic is being implemented in Moldova with the Chinese Government’s financial assistance. Until 2015, it is planned to equip with cameras Chisinau streets and the main national highways. The project costs US$4.7 million. 571 cameras have already been installed at 41 intersections in Chisinau. Depending on the difficulty of street sections, from 4 to 30 video recording devices are installed at intersections. With their help, operators are monitoring the traffic, fixing violations and sending notices of penalties to the infringers. According to these, thousands of motorists have already paid fines totaling over 20 million lei.

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