By Susan Duclos
Yet another sign of the militarization of our police forces and de facto martial law is provided in both an article over at TechDirt and in the CBS Los Angeles video news report below, where we find out that the government is bringing war zone and battlefield surveillance to the streets or shall I say, the air, over America. Not only are they doing it, but the citizens this has been tested on were not even told and never given the opportunity to object or agree.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is using a new surveillance program utilizing the technology of a private contractor doing business under the not-scary-at-all name of "Persistent Surveillance Systems." This gives the LASD a literal eye in the sky that provides coverage it can't achieve with systems already in place. But it does more than just give the LASD yet another camera. It provides the agency with some impressive tools to manipulate the recordings.
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As with nearly everything making its way into law enforcement hands these days, this technology was developed and deployed first in battlefields. Persistent Surveillance Systems' first proving grounds were Afghanistan and Iraq, tracking down bombing suspects. All it takes is a cluster of high-powered cameras and a single civilian plane to watch over Compton with warzone-quality surveillance. According to McNutt, the camera system covers "10,000 times" the area a single police helicopter can. McNutt also believes the system can be expanded to cover an area as large as the entire city of San Francisco.
America has now become the war zone, the battlefield, and everyday Americans, the enemy to the state.
Cross posted at Before It's News