Baltimore Police Now Recording All Citizens With Full-time Aerial Cameras
Big Brother just scored another major win.
Beginning Friday, Baltimore’s 600,000 residents will be under constant video surveillance and find themselves recorded whenever they step outdoors by airplanes leased out to the local police department — part of the city’s campaign to combat rising homicide rates.
The program is slated to run as a trial for the next six months to determine the technology’s effectiveness at reducing crime. Up to three aircraft will be equipped with wide-angle cameras to capture all movement in approximately 90 percent of the city.
The cameras will take one photo per second, and the images can be pieced together with software in order to create a continuous visual record to support other surveillance technology already in place, such as street-level cameras, license-plate readers, and gunfire-sound detectors.
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What does it matter if the people were informed? How pathetic the argument we've all heard- "if you don't have anything to hide, you've got nothing to worry about." Surveillance by law requires probable cause. There is no legal probable cause that every person needs to be watched 24/7 by the police. Another attack on liberty. People snoring.
They informed their citizens of what they were doing, no matter it seems illegal, however, however, I wonder how many other hundreds or thousands of cities are doing the same, but not advising their citizens of their nefarious surveillance activities?
Same old story for Baltimore. Back more than 15 years ago, the city installed surveillance cameras on top of every light post. The cameras were then equipped with blue flashing police lights. The concept from their lawyers was that the cameras that were on were supposed to have their blue lights flashing. Been a while since we've been in Baltimore & we stay out of neighborhoods when we go, but they were still there last I remember.
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