Maryland installs cameras to watch the cameras watching you
Tim Mueller/AP
The move comes after a rash of traffic cameras were destroyed
Here's a new twist on the panopticon: Authorities in southern Maryland are installing cameras to monitor the cameras monitoring auto traffic. Seriously, one of them is already installed.
Local station WTOP reports that a rash of traffic cameras were destroyed so the Prince George's County Police Department decided to install a fleet of cameras to watch the traffic cameras. By the sounds of it they really do have quite the camera vandalism problem:
On April 6, someone pulled a gun out and shot a camera on the 11400 block of Duley Station Road near U.S. 301 in Upper Marlboro, Md.
Two weeks later, a speed camera was flipped over at 500 Harry S. Truman Drive, near Prince George's Community College. Police believe several people were involved because of the weight of the camera itself. Then in May, someone walked up to a camera on Brightseat Road near FedEx Field, cut off one of the four legs, and left.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire.