First, we simply have corporate welfare going on with the Feds underwriting

the purchase of this technology — along with all the military gear police now use. Second, we have a population growing used to always

being watched — and perfectly fine with that. mjh

Federal Grants Bring

Surveillance Cameras to Small Towns
Village in Vermont Has Almost as Many as D.C.
By David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post

Staff Writer

This snowy village [of Bellows Falls, Vt. — population 3,050] , in the shadow of Fall Mountain and alongside the

iced-over Connecticut River, is the kind of place where a little of anything usually suffices. There are just eight full-time police

officers on the town’s force, two chairs in the barbershop and one screen in the theater.

A little of anything — except

surveillance cameras. Bellows Falls has decided it needs 16 of those.

Using federal grant money, police plan to put up the

24-hour cameras at such spots as intersections, a sewage plant and the town square. All told, this hamlet will have just three

fewer police surveillance cameras than the District of Columbia, which has 181 times Bellows Falls’s population. …

On

Maryland’s Eastern Shore, for example, Ridgely Police Chief Merl Evans got a homeland security grant, funneled through the state, to pay

for five cameras apiece in Ridgely, population 1,300, and Preston, population 573. The cameras went up on water towers, at water-

treatment plants and in the two small downtowns.

“It was difficult to be able to find something to use the money

for,” said Evans [mjh: because the Congress makes sure you can only spend it on things that enrich their

contributors.], who is also temporary chief in Preston. He said because the grants needed to be used on “target hardening” —

protecting infrastructure — “the cameras fit in real nice.” …

“What you do in

public, you’ve got no expectation of privacy,” said Police Chief Rick Clark.