80 Eyes on 2,400 People

80 Eyes on 2,400 People
If terrorists come to tiny Dillingham, Alaska, security cameras will be ready. But privacy concerns have residents up in arms.
By Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2006


DILLINGHAM, Alaska — From Anchorage it takes 90 minutes on a propeller plane to reach this fishing village on the state's southwestern edge, a place where some people still make raincoats out of walrus intestine.

This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone.

So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera's shape and design resemble a robot's head.

Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.

By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.

Now the residents of this far-flung village have become, in one sense, among the most watched people in the land, with — as former Mayor Freeman Roberts puts it — "one camera for every 30 residents."

Some don't mind, but many others are furious and have banded together to force the city to take the cameras down.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/pzaxv L.A. Times

See what I mean about your tax dollars and the Fed's! Someone makes the cameras and of course wants to sell them (See money again) and so the Fed's, states, and cities buy them and of course someone has to watch them and service them (See money again) and of course there are upgrades coming along as I type. (See more money again)