How long will camera recordings be kept and who is allowed to access them?

The cameras record to a hard drive kept in a secure location. The length of time the recordings are kept is limited by the capacity of the hard drive, but the City of Cape Town Regulations for public-facing cameras is a maximum of 21 days. Where evidence is needed in a criminal case, it may be longer. The cameras and the recordings can be accessed by the professional monitoring company when investigating an alert/incident or when doing set manual patrols or checks. Any administrators of the camera project (For example, the CID control room) will also be able to stream the cameras to assist with co-ordinating a response, and will have access to past recordings in order to follow up on crime incidents. 

Full audit trails are built into the video management software to record who accessed what, when. 

Video Footage is strictly protected and is only allowed to be given to SAPS and Metro Police for investigation purposes with an official investigation. This is done by way of written request and signed receipt of footage.