Jim Gilmore has a line he uses about himself: he has always been a law enforcement guy. He was an elected chief prosecutor for six years, working hand in glove with police to keep his community safe, and then Attorney General of Virginia. He is also a trial lawyer who says he understands the Bill of Rights and the rules that protect individual citizens. That is the whole tension of this clip, in one person.
His point about police is not an accusation. It is a description. The police will reach for every technology available to do the best job they can, without weighing whether the technology is transforming the society around it. That is their job. Somebody else's job is to weigh it.
So when the Virginia legislature passed a bill attaching cameras to red lights and mailing drivers tickets, Gilmore vetoed it, and said in his veto message that he did not think young Virginians ought to grow up believing they were being watched all the time by a camera. The legislature passed it over his veto. He calls it small potatoes at the time. Then he points at now: flock cameras everywhere, watching everything, all the time. If he were governor today he says he would file a bill to ban and abolish community camera surveillance, so people could go where they want and do what they want in privacy.
Jenny Beth Martin answers with the constitutional question underneath it: when the cameras are always running, are you still innocent until proven guilty?
Watch the full conversation at jennybethshow.com. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — Flock cameras and training people to be watched
00:11 — I have always been a law enforcement guy
01:06 — The red light camera bill
01:25 — The veto message and the override
01:58 — Innocent until proven guilty
02:30 — A Fourth Amendment question
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