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.
I have air horns left over from the boat. Instead of selling them at the yard sale I will keep them, thanks again.
Our close friend has been training Dobermans for decades.
My in-laws were breeders and bear hunters (fed’s used to contract to track bears who’d feed on livestock). I would strongly recommend that you talk to an old bear hunter in the area. They’ll be able to provide you with valuable information. Unless you don’t care for hunters, of course.
They can be cantankerous and suspicious (not all), but they know what they’re talking about when it comes to their dogs and predators.
As you know, your horses will also sense when a predator’s in the area, but they won’t be able to run the animal off. A dog will.
Wishing you, your family, and your livestock all the best.
TJI
I have no problem with hunting. I just believe you use what you shoot. I have some family still in PA & hope to reconnect with them. Maybe they or a neighbor will help me. Although I am trying hard to find a house off the grid as much as possible. It is harder then I ever thought too. I am used to a big house. Thank you for all your advice & the best to you & yours too. Good Night. Pandy
Illegal logging doesn't need to "monitored" at remote camp sites.
Most of it that I've heard of occurs, at least when I lived in an area plagued by it, by poachers conveniently cutting 'over boundary' at a legal harvest site, whether a fed sale, or private land abutting NFS/BLM lands. Quite a bit of extra footage can "accidentally" go onto the trucks from hi-grading or even clear cutting a swathe 50-100' wide and a mile or two long. A 100' X 2mile strip effectively adds about 650 acres to a 2,500-3000 acre timber sale. Say a 2mile square, with an average of 25' over-boundary cutting is 8 miles of boundary gives the same result.
Hikers camping at remote hike-in sites rarely carry felling saws, sets of wedges, gas & oil cans, and a skidder in their backpacks.
I might accept, it it wasn't a primitive site that it was an anti-vandalism measure. Also, most Ranger Districts have maximum stay limits, so it can also be an anti-squatting measure.
More like 24 acres.
25.87 to be exact.
Damned dismal points! /sarc>
Thanks for the correction. Got in a hurry, and quick figured it at acre ~= 200X200 and 640 in a section, so 100' ~= 1/2 arce time the FULL 640, rather than the ~25/26 acres bordering the side of the section.
Sigh! 5280 X 2 X 100/43560 = what you said, and is how I should have calculated it!
24.2424...
Unless of course there is a big sign on it declaring that it’s the property of the US Government.
To which you then deposit it into the nearest lake.
"I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right."
IMO, if any revenues to government (fees, etc.) are required to enter, don’t go there until after the default. Don’t feed the beast.
By Jove I’ve been wrong all these years. A square acre is not 202x202 as I had thought but 208.7x208.7. And 640 acres to the square mile. And, 43,560 square feet. Live and learn. Thanks for the correction.
“Winston Smith would feel right at home.” Well put! That is the first thing that I thought!
It's very annoying that an acre can't be expressed as a square whose side is an even number of feet. About the closest one can get is 220 x 198.
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