State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman has issued a sweeping criticism of local authorities' use of cameras for parking and bus-lane enforcement, saying the system raises serious privacy concerns and lacks transparency and oversight. The report covers Herzliya, Ramat Gan, Hadera, and the local council of Binyamina-Giv'at Ada, which together operated 189 enforcement cameras in 2025. In 2024 alone, the cameras generated 121,000 parking and bus-lane tickets and brought in about 44 million shekels.
The audit found major failures in how video incidents were deleted and recorded. In Hadera, 12 percent of deleted cases, 1,198 incidents, were marked only as “other.” In Ramat Gan, 256,000 suspected violations were erased from the camera archive in 2024 with no documented justification and no managerial oversight, making it impossible to track why footage was removed.
Englman also said privacy safeguards were ignored. In Ramat Gan and Binyamina-Giv'at Ada, images were stored in high quality or without masking, allowing officers to identify people clearly. In Herzliya and Hadera, officers could deliberately turn off face and figure blurring while reviewing footage, a capability the vendor blocked only after the audit intervened. Binyamina-Giv'at Ada kept footage for 21 days, more than double the legal maximum of 10 workdays, and continued recording public space around the clock even after it stopped parking enforcement in March 2024, saying the cameras were being used for security instead.
The report also criticized the municipalities for withholding public data. Herzliya and Ramat Gan released only partial information about enforcement policy, while Hadera and Ramat Gan refused to publish how much money the cameras collected. None of the authorities published evidence that the cameras reduced traffic congestion or improved public order, and none set a plan for removing cameras where violation rates had dropped. In Ramat Gan, ticket issuance fell from 37 percent of incidents in 2021 to 13 percent in 2025.
Englman also faulted the Transportation Ministry for failing to promote bus-lane enforcement outside the few municipalities already doing it. Of 38 local authorities with bus lanes, only six enforce them and publicize the practice. In Ramat Gan, about 11.5 million shekels in bus-lane fines accumulated since 2021 were mixed into regular accounts instead of being kept in a dedicated fund, as required by law. The city opened a separate bank account only in June 2025, and no deposits had been made by the end of the audit. Englman did not examine Tel Aviv’s system, the country’s largest, or the legality of its continued use of license-plate cameras for parking enforcement, which courts have struck down. He concluded that camera enforcement can improve efficiency, but must be used carefully, proportionately, and with limited impact on privacy.
