DISTRICT FORGING SURVEILLANCE NETWORK

More good news on the Big Brother Front. No, I'm not kidding. Done properly, this program only makes good sense. If you want to criticize somebody, might I offer up the name of Osama bin Laden for his loathsome contribution to bringing the New World Order to "America the Paranoid (if you hate surveillance)" one quickening pulse at a time.

Or America the Naive (if you hate to think critically), take your pick.

THE DC GOVERNMENT IS launching a system today that would tie together thousands of city-owned video cameras, but authorities don't yet have the money to complete the high-tech network or privacy rules in place to guide it.

The system will feature round-the-clock monitoring of the closed-circuit video systems run by nine city agencies. In the first phase, about 4,500 cameras trained on schools, public housing, traffic and government buildings will feed into a central office at the D.C. Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Hundreds more will be added this year.

By making all those images available under one roof, officials hope to increase efficiency and improve public safety and emergency response. But civil libertarians and D.C. Council members say the network is being rushed into place without sufficient safeguards to protect privacy.

"The planning has been wholly lacking," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, who plans to hold a hearing on the project.

With its vast reach, the system underscores how security cameras have multiplied since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. By this fall, the District will have installed about 5,600 closed-circuit cameras, about triple the number it had in 2001. Tens of thousands of other cameras have popped up at monuments, banks, stores and other places.

Elsewhere, New York has announced a network of 3,000 public and private cameras to protect Lower Manhattan. Chicago's emergency management office will soon have access to more than 6,000 cameras run by schools, police and other agencies.

The boom has been fueled by technological advances that make it easy to install cameras and search video. But U.S. cities—and D.C. government agencies—have varying rules on the cameras' use.

The D.C. attorney general's office is working on a policy to protect privacy rights, but it will not be completed by the system's launch, said Darrell Darnell, head of the city's homeland security agency. The agencies involved will follow their own rules in the meantime, he said. They vary on such matters as how long images are kept.

Read it all.

HABITS OF AN UNDECLARED JIHADIST

A Dallas man convicted this week for tainting grocery store baked items by sprinkling dried feces on the food is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday. Prosecutors had store surveillance videotapes from a Fiesta grocery store of two incidents in July.

"He takes his own fecal matter and spread it to the wind over the food going to the public," prosecutor Will Ramsey said in court. "It's just so disgusting and, you know what, people get hurt."

The 49-year-old taxi driver was charged with two felony counts of tampering with consumer products. However, defense attorney Clark Birdsall told jurors that there was no way to prove that Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh's actions would have harmed anyone.

"It's OK to be angry at the defendant. I am. But you've got to follow the law," Birdsall said.

Customers had complained that the fresh-baked items smelled and tasted like manure. Nahidmobarekeh said in a statement that he sprinkled the material on the baked goods because store personnel mistreated him. The video showed Nahidmobarekeh take a bag from his pocket and toss what he admitted was feces on baked items. The video also showed him repeat the action several times.

In the statement, Nahidmobarekeh said he took his own feces and dried it in the sun. He then used a cheese grater to grind the material into smaller portions. A jury convicted Nahidmobarekeh, who now faces punishment ranging from probation, to two to 20 years in prison.

How many times does something similar to this happen but the culprit not get caught? How many of these recent e coli breakouts have actually been terrorist activities carefully covered up by officials so as not to alarm the popluation and create backlash—the favorite phobia of those dirty dealers from CAIR I have no empirical evidence that this is the case, but I hear through the grapevine that a recent book by Col. David Hunt has included the Al-Qaeda handbook in the back, and go figure, one of the "war is deceit" twisted jihad techniques outlined by Osama bin Laden and his minions recommends putting feces in the food supply to kill infidels.

How charming! Have they tried cinnamon?