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
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.
Oh my god I highlighted that same
phrase.
Pass this link onward; my liberty is at stake for being a Civil Rights Activist.
http://christopher-
king.blogspot.com/2006/03/monadnock-residents-reject-police-spy.html