Feds Put Cameras in Remote Village

If you needed any further evidence that Congress has completely lost its mind, consider this item from today’s LA Times (as brought to us by Drudge). A DHS war on terror grant is installing 80 cameras in a remote fishing village in Alaska that has just a couple of thousand residents. Taxpayers work hard while Congress spends recklessly and without reason…surely there is some better use for these tax dollars. It is a disgrace and our real security is threatened by this absurd waste of scarce resources.

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.

“You better smile. You’re on camera,” says Roberts, 64, a barge captain. Roberts himself isn’t smiling as he points out a single camera on the side of a building. The camera is aimed toward an alley. (emphasis added)