The Homeland Security Department is putting up cameras!

[Joanne98]

This is a very good reason why the HSD bill being debated in the senate right now should be voted down. They are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists attacks. NOT fighting crime! Nobody ever said anything about "Homeland" sticking up cameras to spy on Americans with.


Chelsea to mount security cameras citywide
By Suzanne Smalley, Globe Staff | June 4, 2005

Chelsea officials plan to install 34 round-the-clock surveillance cameras that cover the entire 1.8-square-mile city, in what they call an innovative anticrime and antiterror strategy that is a model for larger cities in the region.

City Manager Jay Ash said yesterday that the digital cameras will be used as a routine part of daily police work in this city of 35,000. Officers watching in real time will be able to see crimes as they unfold, zooming in on suspects, panning out for a wider view, and reviewing the situation frame by frame.

But critics say the project has the potential to become an Orwellian abuse of power. Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Massachusetts, said it will be critical for Chelsea officials to develop written rules limiting who has access to the cameras' images and for how long they will be stored, a process Ash said is underway.

''Otherwise, we're going to a pure surveillance society where the government is watching your every move," Rose said. ''I don't think that's good law enforcement or consistent with American values."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/06/04/chelsea_to_mount_security_cameras_citywide/

What happened to all the conservatives who love our "freedom"? This has NOTHING to do with terrorism. We need to demand that every fourth grader in the country read "1984", before they can pass.

[Inland]

1. I've got no problem with this.

Like camera programs in other cities such as London and Chicago, they simply take pictures of you in public--not exactly invading your privacy.

If the cameras are limited to public byways and the images discarded after a period of time, then as far as I'm concerned it's no more orwellian than having a cop on the beat.

[Joanne98]

2. I've got a big problem with this. I don't trust them!

[Inland]

9. You don't have to.

Placement of cameras and retention of images can be monitored without a whole lot of trouble--at least, no more trouble than there is now.

Right now in the central cities you are under private surveillance from private businesses. Almost every convenience store has cameras inside and on the parking lot, major buildings survey the street. Who knows what they do with their public observance?

And if the city wanted to intrude on your private life illegally, it could set up in your house. But they aren't intruding on your private life if the pics are taken on the street.

I would rather trust the City, which doesn't even have the manpower to LOOK at images. Chicago, for example, waits until a call, the sound of gunfire, or unusual movement (as defined by an algorithm) before there is a set of human eyes looking at the pics.
http://news.com.com/Chicago%20moving%20to%20smart%20surveillance%20cameras/2100-7348_3-5375074.html

[endarkenment]

4. slow boiled frog syndrome

at what point will you figure out that they are setting up a hugh tech totalitarian police state?

[Joanne98]

7. Exactly! By the time you feel the heat it's too late to jump out.....

[Inland]

10. From observing me on the street?

Never, actually. Law enforcement bears little relationship to a police state.

I don't remember hearing anyone saying during the Clinton administration that putting more cops on the street was the first step toward a police state--or saying that having more cops on the street, able to observe your every move on the public street, was an invasion of privacy and a step toward totalitarianism. The cameras don't do anything a beat cop can do.

No frog, no water, no heat.

[endarkenment]

14. cops on the street are humans interacting with the community

on a human to human basis.

Cameras set up in 'high crime areas' are silent anonymous spies recording very move of every person in their gaze. Their data is collected and processed by computers and anonymous officials with no relationship to the community.

We are gathering all the trappings of the police state and you are ok with it because you will be 'safe'.

Oh, by the way, evidence collected so far indicates that such systems do not deter crime.

[Inland]

16. Still no problem with the cameras.

Whether they can replace community policing isn't an issue anyone has raised.

And data is processed by computers and anonymous officials--anonymous in the sense you have to call City Hall and ask for their names. So? Process it to death. It's just street pictures. There isn't anything private to them.

Try to imagine an improper use or effect of the cameras. It's hard.

And again, police are not trappings of a police state. Law enforcment is not a trapping of a police state. Effective law enforcement is not a police state. Sometimes police and law enforcement on the streets is just to eliminate street crime.

By the way, London officials solved the mystery of who bombed their subways by reviewing their camera tapes. Seems to me that their system has already paid off.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-ed.bomber14jul14,1,1399404.story?coll=bal-opinion-headlines
I see a lot of reasons to see a fascist state coming in this country, but believe me, these cameras weren't on the list.

[Joanne98]

18. Very well said......

[ScamUSA.Com]

3. yeah this is bogus

You drive by the Chelsea PD and you see all the marked cars parked outside...

hello... how about you go outside your bunker and patrol the streets?

[Joanne98]

8. Community policing is too "human" for the right. We're all machines now.

[Joanne98]

12. The guy makes a good point........

WE HAVE TELESCREENS WATCHING US ALL THE TIME, JUST LIKE IN THE BOOK 1984

SIMON DAVIES; London School of Economics, The Houston Chronicle, June 27, 1999, SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. 1 TITLE: Big Brother Lives // acs-VT2001

In Orwell's fictional Oceania, a mass of "telescreens," complete with microphones and speakers, watched over every square inch of public and private space. These devices, centrally monitored, began their life as public information systems, and ended up policing the morals, thoughts and behavior of all citizens. They enforced the will of the state.

Compare this with the present day, where hundreds of thousands of cameras have been placed on buses, trains and elevators. Many people now expect to be routinely filmed from the moment they leave the front gate. Hidden cameras are now being installed unhindered in cinemas, alongside roads, in bars, dressing rooms and housing developments. Once viewed as a blunt tool of surveillance, such devices in the space of 15 years have become a benign, integral part of the urban infrastructure. It is the integration of surveillance with our day-to-day environment that is most telling. And it is the passive acceptance of the surveillance that Orwell feared most.

http://debate.uvm.edu/handbookfile/pubpriv/115.html

It's the PASSIVE ACCEPTANCE that's scary! Doesn't anybody have any instincts anymore? What happened to "fight or flight"? Even a retard should know when to be afraid. The goverment is NOT own friend when it comes to controlling our behavior. That's not something that they should be doing.

[wli]

32. Orwellianism

Frankly the way Bush and Blair are going seems as if they're using Orwell as their playbook.

There is one place there should be more cameras: demonstrations. Getting visual ID on the provocateurs and evidence of police brutality would fix a few things that are going wrong. It's unreasonable search and seizure in general.

[oneold1-4u]

5. Crime and cameras

In a drug infested neighborhood, and near some schools, a few people went around with cameras visible and some simply took shots randomly whether they had film or not. The drug buyers and sellers were paranoid enough that they did not want their face, vehicle, license plate showing up in picture of some children or a kid on a bike.
In one case a big-time seller was out of business because they couldn't make house payment or meet their utility bills. That's doing a cost effective job on crime! The KEY WORD is effective!

[Joanne98]

6. Here's two big problems futher down the article........

The first...."crime hot spots" is CODE for the black community. This is racial profiling with cameras as far as I'm concerned.

Chelsea officials haven't finalized the cameras' locations, but Police Chief Frank Garvin said he believes they will be most effective in crime hot spots.

The second....They're preventing crime. This is straight out of Orwell. "We'll watch you in case you might think of doing something wrong. This is guilty until proven innocent.

''This will act as a deterrent," Garvin said. ''When we have problems with certain areas and gangs, vandalism, drug-trafficking, graffiti, anything, we'll be able to monitor the situation."

[Inland]

13. Oh, please.

Even assuming that "hot spots" mean something other than high crime areas, racial profiling is suspicion or arrest on the basis of assumed characteristics of the race. What does racial profiling have to do with a camera?

And being watched doesn't assume guilt of anyone. It assumes--rightly--that crime takes place on the public byways. It's no more intrusive than police patrols.

And I'm not sure how police prescence, technological or otherwise, that monitorss gangs, vandalism, drugtrafficing, graffiti is bad thing.

[Joanne98]

15. WOW! You're pretty naive.

I guess will just have to test your theory after they're done and see how many of the cameras went up in white "Leave it to Beaver" suburbs.

I bet the parents of the "burb" druggies wouldn't put up with their children being put under HLS surveillence!

[Inland]

19. I'll bet you are wrong.

I'll bet that your suburban high schools have video surveillance of halls, parking lots, and that business do the same.

And I bet that if you survey residents around the camera boxes in Chicago, you would find appreciation and drops in crime rates.

And you don't address how putting up cameras in an area with african americans is racial profiling. Would putting extra foot patrols in those areas be racial profiling? Indeed, the complaint from the african american community is that MORE police should be sent to their neighborhoods.

So what's the problem? The suspicion that some urban neighborhoods are going to get TOO MUCH protection?

[Joanne98]

23. Community policing is human to human interaction, I'm for that!

That's not what the cameras do. They're cold and impersonal.

And white bread America doesn't mind cameras at their schools. Having cameras aimed at they're houses to catch they're children doing something wrong so the state can throw them in jail and throw anyway the key is NOT something they would like.

I got an idea! Let's ask the people of Plano Texas if they want some cameras. They have a big heroin problem with the rich youngsters. They need some help controling their children too. Let's call them up and offer them the Chelsa deal. LOL

[Inland]

25. Call up Plano.

Of course, they don't have crime on their streets, but if they thought that cameras would help, they'd take them. Anyone would.

And although the cameras AREN'T pointed at houses, the idea that there's something wrong with catching stree criminals and terrorists is so opposite to the way people think, it's no wonder why you don't understand that these camera boxes are popular in the way that law enforcement is popular.

[Joanne98]

28. They aren't catching terrorist, they're catching us. We are the criminals.

As far as Big Brother is concerned anyway. As far as this popular with the public, the people are morons, herd animals happily led to the slaughter. Just ask Hitler's propaganda minister. Just attack them, tell them it was someone else then vow to defend them from "the evil OTHER" it works every time. I hate to bring it how stupid people are because that is probably the best argument FOR the cameras.

I love how people don't see themselves as criminals until THEY end up in jail. This is classic divide and rule. Too bad it works so well.

[Inland]

30. Except that's not true.

It's no more true with the cameras than it was without. There are plenty of indications of people being denied rights and ending up imprisoned, but what did cameras have to do with that?

Bush didn't imprison Jose Padilla by setting up a camera at Western and North Avenues and arresting him for tossing a candy wrapper. He just took him and told us that they couldn't tell us why they were holding him. I bet Jose Padilla wishes he could go to a camera tape and argue whether it showed him guilty or innocent.

By the way, people who don't see themselves as criminals until they end up in jail? They are usually unrepetant criminals and I really don't care what they think, if guilty, and am happy to be divided from them. If they are innocent, then a camera picture helps them, not hurts them. If they are in fact guilty, then what's the problem with having a picture help catch them?

By the way, London's camera system has identified the bombers of the subway and bus.

[Joanne98]

31. There wouldn't be so many unrepentant crimininals if.......

There weren't so many unrepentant laws.

We could reduce crime by 50% if we got rid of half of our laws.

[northzax]

22. quick, where are there more police officers?

Chelsea or Brookline?

what's your opinion of Red Light Cameras? proven to save lives. And they only record when a crime is being committed. Or should it only be possible when a human is actually there to cite people?

While it's not directly relevant, cameras do reduce crime. Why do you think every convenience store has a video surveillance system? for fun?

[Joanne98]

27. Red light cameras! Guess who develops the film? Lockheed Martin!!!

Like the film shot by red-light cameras, photo radar film is sent to a processing center run by Lockheed Martin IMS. Though the weapons manufacturer, whose IMS division was the largest automated enforcement vendor in the nation, sold the division to Affiliated Computer Services for $800 million, if Lockheed's projections hold, ACS will reap $44 million from D.C.-generated tickets by 2004 (the city itself will pull in $117 million). It is at this center that the vendor elves, or "image specialists," not only develop film, but decide which pictures warrant citations. Internal Lockheed documents reveal that their camera's success rate can be as low as 42 percent (other vendors fall as low as 33 percent)--meaning that pictures must be tossed for reasons ranging from "data errors" to "clarity of plate." From there, success rates drop even further. After vendors send out the tickets--which may or may not be subject to police review before being issued, depending on the city--it has been estimated by an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study that the registered owner of the vehicle--the one ticketed after a vendor matches a plate number to a DMV record--is the actual driver of the car only 72 percent of the time.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, it must be noted, is one of the staunchest advocates of automated enforcement, and views the 72 percent figure as a triumph. To which any reasonable person might ask, what other law enforcement tool snags the wrong guy over one-fourth of the time, and is still considered a success?


http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/078ftoqz.asp?pg=2

And this is in the Weekly Standard no less! Shock! Is it so insane to think getting your secret pictures, the state took, processed by an arms manufacturer a BAD idea?
It must be me. I'm just paranoid!

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Deterrent vs. enforcement

Fake security cameras are used as deterrents. The real deal here isn't preventing crime, it's evidence capture for law enforcement. The question is, should all the LAW-ABIDING residents of a community be subject to permanent monitoring and cataloguing of their movements in an effort to sort through for the occasional crime caught on tape.
Some other posters have stated they have no problem with that, and I say good for them, but many of us do. Unlike the casual observation of a beat cop, this is a tangible record. It is a fundamental violation of the right to be let alone, as Louis Brandeis put it.

"Crime hot spots" is code, I agree. It's where the concentration of low-income people live. Last I knew in Chelsea those were white and Latino communities but perhaps it's changed.

As if gangs aren't going to make disabling the cameras a part of their neighborhood control strategy.

[oneold1-4u]

11. Growing monster populations

There are some other choices for control: Have more wars to kill off more humanity, create more island prisons for millions, put all would be mental cases behind hospital bars, or hope that there is a way to keep most on their best behavior!

[Joanne98]

21. Have you ever read the Una bombers manifesto?

He said the more people, the more control...

[Joanne98]

17. AND the Chamber of Commerce likes it OF COURSE.

I bet it was their idea......

Susan Gallant, president of the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, said that she doesn't know the specifics of the cameras plan, but that ''anything they can do to eliminate crime in Chelsea is positive

Which reminds me to finish a rant I've been composing titled....
Message to the US Chamber of Commerce. The US is NOT a marketplace or a mall for you to do business in..It's my HOME!

[MadHound]

24. Your headline is misleading friend

It isn't Homeland Security that is putting up these cameras, it is the city of Chelsea that is doing it, they are just doing what any cost concious city does these days, get somebody else to pay for them.

However such use of cameras is still rather disturbing no matter who is doing it. Camera use is one of the most visible signs of how Orwell's nightmare has been creeping up on us over the past thirty five years. At first it was limited to private "security cameras". Then it was traffic control, then red light runners, and now we're interesting the next phase, cameras everywhere, in order to "fight crime" and keep this country "secure". Riiiiight. Camera creep is here and real. Next step, a camera in every home.

For those of you who trot out the tired old canard "You've nothing to fear if you're doing nothing wrong" let me ask you, are you willing to have a camera inside you're house? Your bedroom? For that is slowly, but surely where we are headed in this debacle. Every bomb, every terror threat, every talking head screaming fear 24/7 pushes that many more sheeple into terror mode, and they are then willing to give away anything, including their first born, just to retain some sense of security. If that means that they have a camera in their goddamn toilet, they don't care, just so long as they can feel safe in this hyper-fearmongering society.

Sorry, but enough is enough. Camera aren't the security panacea that they're claimed to be. Look at London, all of their cameras and they still got the shit blown out of them. Any store security manager will tell you that the only thing cameras did is make the thieves much more tricky, they didn't decrease theft except for the short term.

But then again, the real agenda concerning cameras isn't to make this country more secure. It is to keep the power elite in control, and the rest of us pacified. That is what the cameras are really for.

[endarkenment]

26. HS is encouraging communities to do just this.

The headline is only mildly misleading.

[Joanne98]

29. You're right! But HDS shouldn't be involved with fighting street crime

or graffiti! So I'm going to blame them anyway. I think we're going to need a constitutional admendment to settle this privacy issue once and for all. As you can see even some DUer's, who I dearly love, don't get it. We're going to need something the Right-Wing Supreme Court can't overrule. The HDS getting involved in this is scary.

[Joanne98]

33. Homeland Security putting up cameras in Arizona!

NOT for catching terrorists, for catching car thieves.

Thursday, July 07, 2005
Michael: Homeland Security Cameras on I-19

Placing cameras on I-19 to recover stolen cars before they reach the Mexican black markets is a great idea, a clever use of current technology, and a perfect example of how government will increasingly use new information technologies to monitor Americans ever more closely. The plan has perfectly respectible, nay, laudible goals. There is no one who could seriously argue that the system of cameras and automatic database searches would not significantly benefit Arizonans in a variety of ways.

The problem is, of course, the unintended consequences of the government's new capabilities. Once such a capacity exists, there is a tremendous pressure to use the capability in new and creative ways, both legitimate and sactioned, and illicit and unsanctioned. Studies of the Nation Crime Information Center (NCIC) have shown time and again that the information network which makes crime-related dossiers available to law enforcement personnel across the country is regularly misused for private purposes, and that the information is regularly sold into the black market. NCIC gets credit for making America a safer place, but that same information which has such power to fight crime can also fuel darker schemes unless responsibly controlled. Responsibility in the context of law enforcement and intelligence gathering means independent oversight, accountability and transparency above all.

Before supporting Arizona's Homeland Security chief Frank Navarrete's plan, I recommend citizens demand to know, at minimum, how access to the information will be controlled, under exactly what conditions the system will alert, what records will be stored and which destroyed, and how, and what legal safe-guards will be in place to prevent and severely punish misuse of the information. Ideally, open meetings and consultations with civil rights organizations would be an integral part of formulating the legal framework in which such a system would operate, not some deeply secretive commission. Even though there is no constitutional bar to the type of monitoring proposed that I am aware of, new governmental powers with the sort of automaticity and intrusiveness proposed for this system rightly give people the Big Brother willies. That's the healthy response of a free people; I'll really start to worry if Americans start passively accepting such developments without any skepticism.

posted by Michael @ 7/07/2005 04:33:00 PM

http://dean4az.blogspot.com/2005/07/michael-homeland-security-cameras-on-i.html

[Joanne98]

34. Chicago gets Homeland Security cameras....

How many damned cameras have they put up anyway? They're getting 32 billion dollars today from the Senate. I shudder to think what that money will go to.

HOMELAND SECURITY
The Windy City Gets New Eyes
BY MEGAN SANTOSUS

The city of Chicago is serious about security. In September, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced a plan to create a network of 2,250 surveillance cameras throughout the Windy City. This network will "redefine how 911 works," says Ron Huberman, executive director for the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC), who's heading up the implementation.

Today, when a Chicagoan calls 911 (say, to report a fire), the caller's name and address pop up on the dispatcher's screen. The dispatcher then relays the message, and the caller's location, to the fire department. The new system, scheduled to go live in March 2006, will enrich the dispatcher's message with video images from the camera closest to the caller's location, ultimately allowing the fire department to better assess the situation and, consequently, more effectively manage its response and resources.

Chicago already has some 2,000 unnetworked video cameras installed around the city as well as at O'Hare International Airport. An additional 250 cameras will be added at undisclosed locations deemed "high-risk terrorist targets," Huberman says. Linking all the cameras into a single network, tied together with customized off-the-shelf "smart" software, will bring the system to a whole new level, says Huberman. The software will analyze video images and alert operators to anything suspicious, such as a package left unattended in a public area. Once alerted, the operator can view video feeds and decide on the response.

The software will be developed with a $5.1 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The city is spending another $3.5 million to buy additional cameras and build a new operations center.

http://www.cio.com/archive/110104/tl_security.html