Shortly before they approached the cyclist Vitor Medrado, near the People’s Park, in Itaim Bibi, west of São Paulo, two people on a motorcycle were caught by a security company camera. Moments later, they would murder the cycling teacher.
The images were recorded by a surveillance totem from Gabriel’s startup. Only one of the more than 3,000 cameras installed by her in the state capital.
Companies in the sector have registered significant growth in hiring services, under the promise improvement in the sense of security and resolution of crimes and pulled by increasing adhesion in condominiums of middle and low class neighborhoods.
While experts have considered the lack of specific regulation for the activity and its urban and privacy impacts, City Hall have expanded the opinion with companies in the sector with projects such as Smart Sampa.
“The feeling that many citizens have is that, unfortunately, if they are robbed, stealing their cell phone, they will do nothing, because the police are committed to other crimes of greater offensive potential,” says Gabriel CEO Erick Coser. The executive explains that the startup was founded to solve the problem of public safety from intelligence: “We are a technology company.”
Expansion of cameras in São Paulo
For the Gabriel model and its competitors, surveillance totems are mostly installed on sidewalks or residential condominium walls, for prices ranging from $ 300 to a single totem to $ 15,000 in large condominiums that hire them even inside the roads behind the walls.
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The company estimates that its catches were used in 8,600 criminal occurrences of the Civil Police, which resulted in 504 arrests in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. About 400,000 video signs are analyzed by the company.
In the end, what differentiates these services from a simple camera on the wall is the monitoring network: one of the sales speeches is that all totems are connected to the same system and the presence of cameras spreads through the neighborhood facilitates the identification of crimes.
“When there is an occurrence, we have been able to compile a sequence of images formatting a map, for example,” explains the CEO of Hagana, controller of Startup Cosecurity, Chen Gilad. “It’s like a sequence of videos that shows since the occurrence, all in cloud recording, allowing remote and high quality access.”
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Cosecurity has 6,000 cameras installed. They capture quality image up to 30 meters, and it is not uncommon for larger enterprises to fix five of them off their walls. In Pernambuco Street, in the Higienópolis neighborhood, in São Paulo, there are 10 posts only from Cosecurity, hired by some of the buildings in the block.
In cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the first regions to join were rich neighborhoods such as Leblon, Pinheiros and Gardens.
“When we launched in a neighborhood, we have to sell in that place, create this critical mass, and then thick around,” says Coser. From vendors dedicated by region, Gabriel expanded its presence in neighborhoods such as Santana and Tucuruvi, in São Paulo, where the growth rate is faster.
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White Security director, Antonio Coelho, believes that the “middle class realizes that investing in private security can be a differential in the protection of its heritage, mainly because the implementation brings with it the reduction of crime on site”. Another player in the industry, White wrote a three -digit growth in the installation of cameras from 2024 to 2025, especially neighborhoods such as Vila Mariana, in São Paulo.
Who authorizes the installation?
According to the City of São Paulo, the totems are considered by the Clean City Law as members of the city’s urban furniture. When installed in public spaces, such as sidewalks and squares, equipment must approve with the Urban Landscape Protection Commission (CPPU), the Municipal Secretariat of Urbanism and Licensing.
Companies consulted by Infomoneyhowever, they say they do not make authorization requests for the installation of all their posts. White Security, for example, says that legal staff has not identified, so far, no specific CPPU regulations that prevent the installation of the towers, provided that the technical criteria are respected.
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“We have a fragility in legislation that does not clearly delimit which norms take care of this and, of course, in the face of this confusion, what happens is that things are only happening,” says the professor of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at Presbyterian University Mackenzie, Valter Caldana.
Due to the legislation of the city of São Paulo, owners of real estate are responsible for the conservation and maintenance of sidewalks, but have no autonomy to equip them without approval of authorities with objects ranging from signs to totems, explains Caldana.
Some of the companies, such as Cosecurity, claim not to install their totems on the sidewalk, always using the retreat of real estate. In these cases, according to the city, the equipment also needs CPPU approval for the visual communication of the posts that support the cameras.
All posts analyzed by Infomoney It has recorded the brands of companies and can have vibrant colors, lights and even sirens. The items could be considered advertising and should be approved by the City Hall by the Clean City Law, although the totems operators ensure compliance with the dimensions stipulated by the Clean City Law. “The logo is just to identify who is the company that is acting, not advertising, outdoor,” says Coser.
The city did not respond to the Infomoney The questions of how many irregular posts have already been uninstalled and if he has already received a request for authorization from CPPU.
Smile, you are being filmed
Today it is virtually impossible to walk through some of the central roads of Sao Paulo without faced with at least one surveillance totem. Among jurists there is still a debate on the limits of private security companies to register and store passersby images in the face of privacy.
A story from Piauí Magazine Published in April 2024 he pointed out that Cosecurity and Gabriel would have established the first investigations, and the second opening a direct channel with police by WhatsApp.
The legal basis for the processing of personal data in Brazil is established by the General Data Protection Law (LGPD). In its article 11, it determines that they can only be treated “when the holder or his legal guardian consent, specifically and prominently, for specific purposes.”
FGV law professor Alexandre Pacheco explains that this consent is given by the owners for the contract with the security companies. “The problem is that the range of image capture of these cameras will not only capture the owners, will capture everyone who is going through the street.”
According to Gabriel’s Coser, images captured by security cameras are shared unrestrictedly with the owners. In the case of people who travel the street and are not customers, they are only disclosed by presenting a police report.
LGPD allows images to be shared to fulfill a legal or regulatory obligation by its controller. In the cases of the companies with whom Infoomoney talked, the images are shared with the Civil Police only by presenting a letter.
“There is no norm that explicitly says that a letter sufficient or that, once a notification from a police delegate is received, it should already provide this information,” says Pacheco. “My interpretation is that a court order would be necessary to access these images, in view of the guarantees that criminal law confer. But this is not even a peaceful point, ”he says.
Through the Sampa Sampa Videomonitoring Project, the city of São Paulo would look like 22 private sector surveillance companies. It is a state prerogative to use facial recognition technology to identify people compared to databases.
When he signed the first contracts for implementation of the program, he stated that the images would only be used if they reach 90% of similarity in facial biometrics and would pass a committee integrated with the Municipality General Comptroller for analysis before shipping.
White Security differentiates its facial facial recognition technology. “It means that we can detect the frequency with which a face appears or, if we have a previously supplied image, identify its presence in our towers,” explains Coelho. “However, we do not identify the person. Our technology is integrated with Public Safety Systems, such as Smart Sampa and Cortex that perform this identification, but this information is not passed on to White. ”
According to the InfomoneySecurity companies have been talking to City Hall to draw totems installation criteria. Experts point out that guidelines could be defined through a decree or legislation can be proposed by the City Council in the case of São Paulo.
