Blogging for Freedom

Press Release:  July 1, 2006

According to an article in the Spokesman Review (7-1-06), Post Falls, Idaho recently received a $145,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to install infra-red video camera equipment along Interstate 90 that will capture an image of every license plate of the million or so vehicles that pass through there each month. This information will be instantaneously checked against a "nationwide database of stolen cars, suspected criminals and possible terrorists". said Lt. Scot Haug of the Post Falls police department.

The joint DHS grant to Kootenai County Sheriff's Department and Coeur d' Alene City police will also fund cameras for the same purpose on the Route 90 junction with Highway 95 - the main north-south route leading to Canada and California.

The City of Post Falls sits near the Washington border astride the interstate, the single major east-west route from Seattle to Minneapolis. The PF City website claims an estimated population of 18,000 souls in 2001. According to Lt. Haug, there are already 40 surveillance cameras operating in various locations around the city in addition to a 360 degree eye, capable of zooming into bedroom windows a quarter of a mile away, atop a tower at the police station.

Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson said he believes the public would have been outraged in the past "if they thought Big Brother was watching." "I think attitudes have changed. It's making people safer." he claimed.

How it will make people safer is not yet clear. No information was released about how the new program will actually work, or how accurate and reliable it will be, what records will be gathered, where the records will be held, how long they'll be kept, who will see them, or who will act on them.  No one can possibly know these things, an anonymous government official confided, since a surveillance and database mining operation of this scale and magnitude has never been tried anywhere in the world.

How many Constitutional ciivl rights Idaho citizens, commuters and travelers are willing to relinquish every day of their lives in the war on terror is also unknown. Early victims appear to be the right of law-abiding Americans to move freely in their own country without fear of police intimidation and government intrusion and all the Constitutional rights guaranteed to American citizens in the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." 

Arguing that civil rights are "quaint" and "outdated" and a necessary sacrifice in the war to save democracy and freedom, the US government is effectively suspending the legal tradition of presuming a citizen is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. In order to keep Idaho safe from criminals and terrorists, everyone who lives or passes through Idaho is now assumed to be a criminal and/or terrorist until proven innocent by the Department of Homeland Security.

No details were released as to when the surveillance system will be operational in real-time in the real world.  Since it's never been proven anywhere in the world to actually work, nobody knows.  How much the program will ultimately cost taxpayers is anybody's guess. 

In order to protect the safety and security of America, information about American citizens who are targeted, followed, stopped, detained, searched, questioned, arrested, rendered, jailed, tried, convicted, sentenced, incarcerated and bankrupted by police and government officials is classified Top Secret.

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