Sep 02, 2026

Surveillance cameras now watch nearly every street in America, and the man who tried to stop the first version of them says the country never had the debate. Jim Gilmore was Governor of Virginia when the legislature sent him a bill putting cameras on red lights. He vetoed it, and he wrote in the veto message that he did not want young Virginians growing up believing they were being watched all the time. The legislature overrode him. The cameras now read every plate that passes, artificial intelligence is being attached to them, and Gilmore says he would file a bill today to ban community camera surveillance outright. Jim Gilmore is the 68th Governor of Virginia. He was an elected chief prosecutor and Attorney General of Virginia, chaired the Republican National Committee, chaired the National Commission on Homeland Security for five years, and served as United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He was governor on September 11, 2001, and he calls that day a watershed that turned America into a security society. He tells Jenny Beth Martin why you cannot be completely secure and be free at the same time, why he is not worried about socialism as a movement but is worried about the affordability frustration that socialist candidates are exploiting, what the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence meant to him at Monticello, and why he calls Europe the pivot of the twenty first century. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.

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