Just a quiet little story a lot of people will barely notice:
Homeland security officials plan to install more security cameras Downtown in time for the Super Bowl.
Sixty-eight cameras are mounted in key areas throughout Downtown. By year's end, officials plan to add seven more near Lucas Oil Stadium and six or more along Georgia Street.
"Any time public-safety improvements are made, it's great for our community," said Dianna L. Boyce, spokeswoman for the 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee. She added that the cameras will benefit residents and visitors.
Why, this is just 13 more cameras -- there are already 68 installed; this is barely worth mentioning. And, really, they're for the benefit of ordinary citizens and the community's public safety. Crimes can be solved, and bad guys can be spotted even before they act.
But note the presence in the story of Homeland Security and the fact that the cameras are federally funded, and see if you can read on without getting a little paranoid. First, a report from San Francisco:
The Department of Homeland Security will fund an effort by San Francisco to install real-time video cameras on 358 city buses, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The existing system, installed a decade ago, stores footage on tape located on each vehicle.
According to city documents, “the new system will provide real-time viewing of images, inside and outside the bus, by law enforcement officers, emergency responders and other authorized personnel on a real-time basis from a distance of about 500 yards in case the bus is hijacked and used for terrorism activities.”
In March, it was reported the DHS planned to introduce new mobile surveillance technology at train stations, stadiums and streets.
[. . .]
The new technology allows the government to “track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take
