[MR] Should we be concerned?

[M'lady Foxy]

  I can understand from point of supervising area wildlife or possible dangerous animal reports (IE nasty bear attacking sites or people hunting out of season) or even drug enforcement but makes me wonder is WHY they are being so secretive about it... good thing our dresses at sca events cover our laps =)

--- On Wed, 3/17/10, Jacqueline Lee <lilithquestor at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Jacqueline Lee <lilithquestor at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [MR] Should we be concerned?
> To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
> Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 1:48 PM
> I found this in a mailing from one of
> my Yahoo groups.  The Post and Courier that published the
> story is the highly respected main newspaper for
> Charleston, SC.  It relates to a situation in a largely
> undeveloped national forest up on 17 North between Mt.
> Pleasant and Georgetown.  While we haven't had any events
> there for a long time (sometimes an area can be TOO
> primitive) it makes me wonder about other areas frequently
> used by the SCA.
>  
> Megara
>   
>  
> Francis Marion has hidden cameras
> Forest Service says devices used for law enforcement
> By Tony Bartelme 
> The Post and Courier
> Tuesday, March 16, 2010
> 
> 104 Comment(s) 
> 
> 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. 
> 
> Photo by Brad Nettles 
> 
> Staff
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 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."
> 
> Provided/Herman Jacob
> 
> Herman Jacob found this motion-activated camera in a
> primitive campsite in the Francis Marion 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. 
> 
> Reader poll
> Do you agree with the U.S. Forest Service putting
> surveillance cameras in the Francis Marion National Forest?
> Yes 
> No 
> See results
> 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. 
> 
> The Post and Courier's on-line center for investigative
> reporting.
> 
> Are you ticked off by people who illegally use handicap
> placards? Want to know which restaurants are making you sick
> or which gas stations have bad pumps?
> 
> Check out what our Watchdog reporters found. 
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 
>       
> ========================================================================
>                
>    The Merry Rose Tavern at Cheapside
>     List Info: http://merryrose.atlantia.sca.org/
>   Submissions: Atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
> Subscriptions: http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/listinfo.cgi/atlantia-atlantia.sca.org
>