Thanks for keeping an eye on me. I feel much safer now.
Did you notice the "benefit" of these cameras is for public health and safety? Does that make any sense?
How does it improve the public's health?
As for the public safety, well I guess its a matter of how you define "safe." I don't feel safer when cameras watch my every move, regardless if I was a criminal or not. This is a surveillance police state in the works, to keep everyone safe from themselves.
Not only will the streets be monitored, but schools and public housing as well. Keep everyone safer by watching, thank you big brother.
The cameras clearly will not deter crime, they will just document abuses. That doesn't sound like much help to me.
But the announcement left some civil liberties advocates and a key D.C. Council member concerned.
"We've been sort of sounding the alarm on this stuff for a long time, saying these little pieces — they grow," said Art Spitzer, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area. "You put a camera here, it's not so bad, you put a camera there, it's not so bad. But then it turns out all the sudden, we find out there are 5,200 cameras. That's a big number."
Wow, 5200 cameras in one city. That sounds like a surveillance society to me.
I guess Ron Paul wasn't so far off now was he?
The Video Interoperability for Public Safety (VIPS) program will consolidate the more than 5,200 cameras operated by D.C. agencies — including D.C. Public Schools and the D.C. Housing Authority — into one network managed by the city's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
And we all know how well FEMA and DHS deals with tragedy. How well did they manage Hurricane Katrina? That was a disaster that no one could have foreseen, except the Federal Emergency Management Agency whose job it is to foresee such events (well I could have told the residents of New Orleans that building a city under sea level or at sea level is a terrible idea, but that's another story).
Consolidate all the cameras under 2 defunct agencies, great idea. That sure will stop crime...
BIG BROTHER
D.C. officials yesterday said they plan to link more than 5,000 cameras to form a surveillance network to help combat crime and terrorism. The following city agencies have cameras:
D.C. Housing Authority: 720
D.C. Public Schools: 3,452
Department of Parks and Recreation: 181
Department of Transportation: 131
Metropolitan Police Department: 92
Department of Corrections: 218
Office of Property Management/Protective Services Division: 468
D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency: 4
TOTAL: 5,266
Yay for DC tyranny! Hip hip hooray for fascism!
www.washingtontimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)
