Big Brother: Is the Red Squad Back in Chicago?

It’s a good media practice to check out how others interpret what goes down on our local streets. This report on Chicago’s extensive network of surveillance cameras links current efforts to protect Chicagoans to episodes in Chicago’s recent past where the law-breakers were the Red Squad, a part of the Chicago Police Department.

The correspondent interviews an interesting group of Chicagoans–from Ed Yonka of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to Chris Drew, who is being charged with a Class One Felony for recording his own arrest, to Bernadette Dohrn whose Chicago connection stretches from her current tenures as associate professor and director at Northwestern University’s Children and Justice Center back to her days as a leader of the Weathermen.

Read the whole story on RT (Russia Today) a digital TV station in Moscow, Russia that covers entertainment programs and local news in English. Sponsored by the state-owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti, it has been online since 2005. The web site is presented in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Russian. Here’s a taste of the story, and links to the story and video:

Welcome to Chicago – the most “watched” city in the US. From old-school blue light cameras to cameras with state of the art technical capabilities – watchful lenses fill the streets.

 

 

In what has been dubbed Operation Virtual Shield, thousands of public and privately owned security cameras have been put in place and linked together, creating a capsule of surveillance over the entire city, more extensive than anywhere else in the United States.

Chicago holds the record for number of surveillance cameras, estimated at up to 10,000. The network is said to have cost $60 million.

Officials say it is worth the price, but privacy concerns are at a peak.

Over twelve hundred security cameras located throughout the city are said to be powerful enough to zoom into a text of a book, or even a text message.

A 37-page report from a renowned civil rights group – the ACLU – calls the network pervasive and unregulated.

Finish reading and watch the fascinating video at  Big Brother: Is the Red Squad back in Chicago? — RT.