I don't know if it's the current President or the huge bureaucracy driving this, I'd expect the latter and it is happening. When I saw this road closure thing you guys mention first hand, I wondered over it. Clearly it wasn't done so that the forests would regenerate. All they did was dig a deep hole and dump that big pile of dirt in front of that hole on every side road off the main FS gravel road. They did it on "roads" that were no longer than 1/4 mile, ie, just enough for a vehicle to tuck into unobserved. What I soon came to understand is that the Forest service has decided that YOU need to be watched, in case YOU commit a crime. I figured that out later when I learned that they have a Forest Service police force that routinely dives those roads and it makes it easier to keep an eye on us. The area I mention below is too high up in elevation to grow pot, too far out and inconvenient for meth heads to set up a lab.
My personal story is this: Last Feb. 2010, I was up hiking solo with my 2 dawgs into a remote new climbing area to look around and see what winter looked like up there. I came driving out on the single lane dirt road and bumped into a forest service patrol vehicle coming my way....something in and of itself I find new, strange, unneeded and unwelcome. A Jeep with bubblegum lights on top, clearly a police vehicle. I pulled over to a pullout and waved the hello greeting and they stopped. It turned out that I did know one of the guys and we rolled out windows down and did the "hail fellow well met" thing, he gets out, Glock on hip and leans in the window.....just talked bullbubblegum and what was up, happy to see each other. He works for another Federal police agency but was doing a "ride along" thinking he might go work for the Forest Service police.
I thought it strange they were patrolling on a dirt road so far into the woods, at a time of year that few folks were out there, I figured they were looking for something specifically. Nope: later I heard from the guy that it was just a routine patrol, but that ALL of the Forest Service roads had these hidden cameras installed. All of them. Evidently it's usually close to where the roads start. He says "Don't bother looking, you'll never find them, LOL".
I did a google search and saw nothing about anything like this, and was wondering if I might have been the subject of a joke by my buddy. I couldn't find anything searching for all kinds of different terms: "Forest Service installing surveillance cameras", or spy cameras on dirt roads", or "hidden police cameras in the woods" kind of thing anywhere.
I let it go until I got an e-mail from the Western States lands Coalition <broken link removed> with the news story dated Mar 12th 2010 that the first camera was just found, also in February. Check out the location! East Coast. Remember that I'm in Oregon on a Forest Service road, (it was FS road 4620 at the Indian henry turnoff up past Memalose on the Clackamas) having this discussion with my buddy and he was saying ALL roads had cameras. Is homeland security grants paying for all this monitoring? How many new hires do they have? How do they upload this info? Is it computer monitored or did they go to India for labor?
Full link followed by full text of the news story:
<broken link removed>
(REMEMBER, I DIDN'T WRITE THIS NEXT PART, IT'S A FULLY AND EXACTLY QUOTED NEWS STORY)
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"Hidden cameras - Forest Service says devices used for law enforcement
By Tony Bartelme
The Post and Courier
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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 the wire 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.
Herman Jacob squats next to a stump and log in the Francis Marion National Forest where he found a video camera buried and pointing toward a camping site (background) where he and his daughter were camping. Jacob was looking for firewood when he across the camera that was put there by the Forest Service.
Photo by Brad Nettles
Provided/Herman Jacob
Herman Jacob found this motion-activated camera in a primitive campsite in the Francis Marion National Forest.
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 had 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, told Watchdog that the camera was part of a law enforcement investigation, but she declined to provide any of the investigation's 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, of course, 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. Highway 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.
"He sounded all bent out of shape that I had his camera," Jacob recalled. He asked Heitzman about the camera's purpose. When Heitzman told him that illegal activities were taking place in the area, Jacob said he asked whether it was safe to camp there. He said that Heitzman reassured him that it was. Jacob said he later wondered why the Forest Service would set up a camera in an area they considered safe. "Now, I'm wondering how many campsites they're monitoring?" He phoned Charleston attorney Tim Kulp for advice.
Kulp said the Forest Service's failure to explain what they're doing in the forest raises important privacy questions. "What's the goal here?" He said the Forest Service also needs to address what they do with images of people who aren't targets of any investigation, particularly of children.
Kulp said people generally are willing to give up their privacy if it means protection from harm but not if law enforcement officials are merely cracking down on petty offenses.
He added that people's expectations of privacy in a remote area in the National Forest are different than other public spaces. "You're not going to go to the bathroom in the parking lot of Walmart, but you're not going to think twice in the forest." Both are public spaces, he said, but most people likely would expect to have more privacy in the forest."
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That's the end of the news story. I have not seen any further stories like this, and expected that I would have by now. For myself, I'm sadly beginning to feel more like it's even more of an "us against them" thing. I don't see how you guys get to some of the crazy scenarios you describe above though. But I'm sticking to actual facts that I know here. There's still some gaps. (ie, the big "WHY are they doing this?" remains) I served my county and I'm an honorably discharged veteran. I consider myself hardworking honest and patriotic. Yet I have to tell you, my own government utilizing all these resources to be needlessly spying on me and expanding it's powers for no apparent reason is shockingly unsettling and disturbing. I understand surveillance to help on criminal investigations. I understand that they have the right to look through my garbage cans, but having the right is different than having them actually and routinely go through them, or following my every move all the time when I am in public spaces. Somehow, we don't have the resources to keep murderers, rapists and thieves in jail, but we have the funds to do this expensive and needless monitoring of honest citizens for no apparent purpose? (The camera appears to be a standard "Bullet camera -@$400.00, wrapped with camo tape, and the recoRding device is named above -@ $500.00. They look to have increased the battery size inside cover of the waterproof case -total $ - what $1200? per unit?) We can't keep illegals out from Mexico but we can spend millions or perhaps billions of uncharted and secret dollars to monitor all these dead end dirt roads in the middle of nowhere frequented primarily by honest citizens? It's total bullbubblegum and I find it very, very, disturbing. That we are borrowing the money from China, because we cannot afford it, is the worst part. Until we can get funding cut off for all this big brother encroaching federal goverment stuff. Individuals going and finding cameras and pulling them out will be counter productive in that they will just buy new ones, and also use it as an opportunity to expand their bureaucracies even larger to deal with that issue.
I asked A local NFS employee, and this was her answer to my question, about hidden cameras on NFS land.
This was her answer~
Hahaha. It's happens "very infrequently" ( yea, right ). Its red tape putting cameras out in the first place and are done in law enforcement situations such as in cases of trying to catch special forest product theft, drug cartels, or reoccurring vandalism/breakins/car clouting. We have car clouting at certain trailheads that is likely done by the same person so LE may put out a camera to try to catch them.
At which time i pointed out, that this did not happen at a trailhead, a main road, or similar spot, but at a primative campsite.
The NFS employee, would not comment as to why the camera would be hidden in that location...
I do not want some pervert, sexual predator, or anybody else, watching my ladies doing there business behind a bush, etc...
It's bad enough that people hide cameras in dressing rooms, hotel rooms, etc... It is really a shame that you must be on guard every where you go for hidden cameras or other surveillance gear.
M67
