Art Buchwald writes about the hometown:
It’s hard to believe, but Las Vegas has just won the title of “Best Homeland Security Town in America.” I went there to find out why.The first thing I learned is that Vegas has its own satellite in the sky, looking down on the roofs of all the casinos. On the roof of each casino are men staring at TV monitors that show everything going on in the casinos. They are particularly watching the floor bosses. The floor bosses are watching the pit bosses, who are watching the dealers, who are watching the crapshooters. The customers are watching the dealers in hopes of hitting blackjack.
Security men at all the doors are watching everyone come in and out of the casino. Single men are watching chorus girls and single women are watching chorus guys.
The youngsters are watching the animals in the cages and the animals are watching the children.
And the IRS is watching EVERYBODY 24 hours a day.
While the beefed-up security and the IRS monitoring (which happens to be going on nationwide, methinks) is quite factual, I was surprised to learn that Las Vegas has its own satellite watching over the tourists.
Watching the casinos are justified, though I think the satellite system goes way beyond a tip of the hat to Orwelll. What would really be haunting is the potential that satellite surveyance might go beyond the tourism sector and over to the residential areas of Southern Nevada in the name of homeland security.
(link via Connie du Toit @ Liberty Dogs)
One Response to “Watching Over the Tables”
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Live Satellite surveillance over residential sectors across the nation may not be too far off.
Check out the folks at GlobeXplorer.com … click on their aerial atlas feature, enter your address and you can zoom in on the resulting shot of your neigborhood, street and even your house.
A friend pointed me to another such Earth Viewer where you can view aerial satellite shots in greater detail, (although I haven’t tried that one yet).
If the general pubic has access to that, can you imagine what the commecial and govt. entities are capable of? Makes me shudder.