MassPrivateIScranton, PA – Authorities in Scranton are looking to increase surveillance all over the city. Not by adding more cameras, but by adding more spying eyes looking at the cameras already in place.
Where does it end? Will we be surveilled everywhere we go by police & private companies?
Scranton City Council announced this week that it is applying for a DHS grant that would create community-wide surveillance for Scranton Police.
But the grant money wouldn’t pay for any cameras. It would pay for software that would allow Scranton Police to tap into private surveillance systems.
Police in Philadelphia have even coined a name for registering your private cameras with them its called ironically enough “SAFECAM“
“Registering your camera not only helps deter crime, but assists the Department in its overall crime prevention strategy in your neighborhood. Protect yourself, your family and your community by registering with SafeCam.”
“If we’re to have 100 camera feeds here we can look at those feeds and see what direction the suspect didn’t go in. Even more importantly also, we can see which direction they didn’t go in, we don’t have to send officers where they don’t have to be,” said Scranton Police Chief Carl Graziano.
Chief Graziano said Scranton City Council is looking to buy software that would allow officers to tap into private surveillance systems, with permission, and show more than 100 video feeds on a wall at Scranton Police Headquarters.
Once the monitors are in place, all Scranton police need is an I.P. address for any existing surveillance system for any private institution in the city.
And what’s the common denominator being spouted by government employees? Why its safety of course at the expense of our privacy. The comment below is a perfect example:
“And anything that would be fed into the Scranton Police Department from our sites can also help our tenants and our residents and protect them even further,” said Karl Lynott of the Scranton Housing Authority.
http://wnep.com/2014/05/30/scranton-police-plans-for-expanded-security/
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/06/police-are-using-dhs-grant-money-to-spy.html