Badger Wordsmith:

On his first day in office, President Barack Obama promised to “usher in a new era of open government.” Many advocates of federal government transparency, however, believe the Obama administration has went further than his predecessor, George W. Bush, to seal the doors of the federal bureaucracy from public scrutiny.

In 2008, candidate Obama promised to close Gitmo—the U.S. terrorist detention center in Cuba, and claimed, that if elected, his administration would give terrorist suspects trials in civilian courts. The Obama campaign further promised to “revisit” the USA Patriot Act “to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.” …

And yesterday, President Obama, who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, continued to trample on the document by signing an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The only thing “foreign” about this act is its willingness to ignore hundreds of years of judicial and legislative precedents concerning the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions of unreasonable searches. By extending FISA to 2017, the Orwellian National Security Agency (NSA) will now have access to over 1.7 billion daily text messages, emails, and telephone calls that take place on American soil. …

Meanwhile, most Americans, as long as they have access to their electronic gadgets, seem ambivalent that every Web page they visit, every purchase that they make online or with a credit or debit card, and many of their telephone conversations—if they say one of hundreds of key words—are being secretly recorded and stored in an NSA database.

“If you want a picture of the future,” George Orwell wrote in his book, “1984,” imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Unfortunately, the American future is now the present. Whether it is biometric ID (Real ID for those of you in the mainstream media), Iris scans, surveillance cameras throughout the interstate and on light poles and busy intersections, Big Brother is watching, chronicling and storing what you say, where you travel, what you purchase and what you advocate.

Interestingly, there seems to be little public criticism of the cameras. The author quotes a certain outstanding Wisconsin newspaper in a post about surveillance cameras:

Surveillance—particularly security cameras, traffic cams, and squad car traffic video—increasingly plays a role in criminal investigations. One recent example is the Christmas Eve homicide of on-duty Wauwatosa Police Officer Jennifer Sebena. …

According to the criminal complaint, detectives from the Wauwatosa PD gained access to surveillance video from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Statewide Traffic Operations Center—an Orwellian-type facility with access to the stored data from hundreds of surveillance cameras.  From a camera mounted on the top of a traffic pole at N. 108^th and W. Burleigh Streets, investigators observed a black Toyota Prius with black tire rims traveling westbound on W. Burleigh at 3:45 a.m.—about 35 minutes prior to Officer Sebena’s body being located outside the Tosa fire station just over four miles away. A minute later, the same vehicle was observed on video moving northbound on Hwy. 45 from W. Burleigh Street en route to the Sebena residence. The black Prius matched the description of the vehicle Benjamin Sebena drove to the Wauwatosa PD less than three hours later. …

And the use of surveillance cameras is not limited to large cities or high-profile murder investigations. In the small, southwestern Wisconsin city of Platteville, police have access to three cameras, some of which are disguised as simple street lights.

http://www.swnews4u.com/section/1/article/9937/

These “Eyes in the Sky” allow the Platteville PD to enforce quality of life issues, like public urination and vandalism.

While the video in Platteville is typically stored for 30 to 60 days, sources say that data obtained from traffic cams by the Wisconsin DOT’s Statewide Operations Center can be retained for up to 10 years.

Like it or not, as George Orwell said, “Big Brother is watching.”