Posted on 03/22/2010 10:04:52 PM PDT by MamaDearest
Last month, Herman Jacob took his daughter and her friend camping in the Francis Marion National Forest. While poking around for some firewood, Jacob noticed a wire. He pulled on it and followed it to a video camera and antenna.
The camera didn't have any markings identifying its owner, so Jacob took it home and called law enforcement agencies to find out if it was theirs, all the while wondering why someone would station a video camera in an isolated clearing in the woods.
He eventually received a call from Mark Heitzman of the U.S. Forest Service.
In a stiff voice, Heitzman ordered Jacob to turn it back over to his agency, explaining that it UShad been set up to monitor "illicit activities." Jacob returned the camera but felt uneasy.
Why, he wondered, would the Forest Service have secret cameras in a relatively remote camping area? What do they do with photos of bystanders?
How many hidden cameras are they using, and for what purposes? Is this surveillance in the forest an effective law enforcement tool? And what are our expectations of privacy when we camp on public land?
Officials with the Forest Service were hardly forthcoming with answers to these and other questions about their surveillance cameras. When contacted about the incident, Heitzman said "no comment," and referred other questions to Forest Service's public affairs, who he said, "won't know anything about it."
Heather Frebe, public affairs officer with the Forest Service in Atlanta, said the camera was part of a law enforcement investigation, but she declined to provide details. Asked how cameras are used in general, how many are routinely deployed throughout the Forest and about the agency's policies, Frebe also declined to discuss specifics. She said that surveillance cameras have been used for "numerous years" to "provide for public safety and to protect the natural resources of the forest. Without elaborating, she said images of people who are not targets of an investigation are "not kept."
In addition, when asked whether surveillance cameras had led to any arrests, she did not provide an example, saying in an e-mail statement: "Our officers use a variety of techniques to apprehend individuals who break laws on the national forest."
Video surveillance is nothing new, and the courts have addressed the issue numerous times in recent decades. The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, and over time the courts have created a body of law that defines what's reasonable, though this has become more challenging as surveillance cameras became smaller and more advanced.
In general, the courts have held that people typically have no reasonable level of privacy in public places, such as banks, streets, open fields in plain view and on public lands, such as National Parks and National Forests. In various cases, judges ruled that a video camera is effectively an extension of a law enforcement officer's eyes and ears. In other words, if an officer can eyeball a campground in person, it's OK to station a video camera in his or her place.
Jacob said he understands that law enforcement officials have a job to do but questioned whether stationing hidden cameras outweighed his and his children's privacy rights. He said the camp site they went to -- off a section of the Palmetto Trail on U.S. 52 north of Moncks Corner -- was primitive and marked only by a metal rod and a small wooden stand for brochures. He didn't recall seeing any signs saying that the area was under surveillance. After he found the camera, he plugged the model number, PV-700, into his Blackberry, and his first hit on Google was a Web site offering a "law enforcement grade" motion-activated video camera for about $500. He called law enforcement agencies in the area, looking for its owner, and later got a call from Heitzman, an agent with the National Forest Service.
They probably have a lojack system on them like the high school laptops. If I saw one filming me I think I would be very pist off. I thought you had to post signs saying the area is under surveillance...
Sorry but my behind is tattoo free. Now when I go hiking which is going to be rarely I will be looking for cameras.
You don’t know men if you think they need a tattoo to recognize a specific woman’s behind. ;^)
I would have dropped it in the nearest lake.
The Forest Service is set up to manage the timber as a federal asset and the rangers are like the security guards. Security guards use cameras.
A good question would be why do we need to manage timber as a federal asset? Especially when some of the “national forests” where I live (Southern California) have no harvest-able timber, just bushes and an occasional tree.
Well I will camo paint that too then lol.
If someone were illegally logging timber would you need a camera to notice that? Or by ‘management’ do you mean they want to watch the trees grow?
I’m a pretty good artist.
I will remember that & thanks.
I gave up trying to conform to the rules for camping and fishing years ago. Not just the stuff about packing human waste out. Fishing regs were like law school books, designed to discourage the casual sportsperson. I didn’t need the hassle.
Security guards my eye. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. Despite popular belief, we, as American citizens, are treated as if we’re suspects.
And you can save the debriefing for some snot nose college freshman. My cibling’s one of the Green Gestapo.
Manage timber?! That’s rich. Yeah, and we all know how well the US Forest Service manages are public lands/timber. I mean, with all the fires destroying old growth forests due to overgrowth (which, due to the intensity of heat, can sterilized the soil), what would we have done if it weren’t for the Forest Service.
(We’ll ignore that small, tiny detail concerning our logging industry, and how well they had managed our forests before the Green Gestapo enlightened the general population, and put the breaks on those evil loggers)
Think outside the forest.
You’d need the camera to notice the logging if you hadn’t been there lately, and aren’t going to get there any time soon. The rangers have big territories to monitor.
As I understand it, from reading a government agency handbook awhile back, the reason the Forest Service exists is not to please the public. It’s to manage the forest. The campgrounds and trails and such are all secondary in priority to that. You might well ask why the Forest Service exists or why it has this job. [I rather assume it dates back to a time when a lot of timber would have been needed for waging war.] But since the USFS does have this job, it may as well do it more cheaply and efficiently.
If they don’t notice the big trucks full of logs going out the few roads that enter forest lands then the cameras probably won’t help.
If they post signs saying under surveillance that is one thing. Filming a family camping trip is another. I am not ok with Big Brother filming me at all.
Amazing—so when nature calls, you “go behind the bushes” only to find that you’re on Candid Camera :(
Yes. They should post signs.
It wouldn’t be possible to monitor the national forests efficiently unless they put hundreds of thousands of cameras in them and that wouldn’t be cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
It really is sad that we can’t enjoy the forests without wondering if we are being filmed. We have cameras on our traffic lights, at our stores etc. They are all over the d@mn place.
No it wouldn’t be. I hope the bears rip them apart.
TigersEye ~ LOL!
married21 ~ “You might ask.....”
No, I don’t ask because I know we don’t need the US Forest Service. You read a government agency handbook?! That’s no different than saying you’re going to read the Communist Manifesto for an objective view on Capitalism. Or it like asking a salesman if you should buy his car? What’s he going to say, “No, it’s a lemon. Visit the dealer down the block”?!
Our country was never designed to appoint a federal government, let alone the Forest Service. And our Founding Fathers had good reason in designing America in this way. Centralized power corrupts. Period. Futhermore, it’s inefficient.
The rangers work for the taxpayer. Cheaply and efficiently?! What, did you read that out of the handbook too?
The US Forest Service is in place to survey innocent people, despite the well worn tales you’ve come to believe as truth.
Are you a Forest ranger?
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