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America Is Another Step Closer To A Police State (Must Read)

Farmington Hills just became the first city in America to host a state-of-the-art system of lampposts that make up something called the Intellistreets system. 

Simply put, the Intellistreets project is a system of Internet-connected luminaries that communicate with one another across the city. In addition to lighting the area, they can broadcast verbal and written messages, monitor rainfall and give directions.’

According to their own website, the system is also great for “data harvesting.”

Not only does Intellistreets offer information about the neighborhood and provide light, it also monitors the conversations of pedestrians, records video, monitors foot-traffic and counts heads — all of which is recorded and stored for possible analysis. And according to Harwood, the tiny 80,000 community of Farmington Hills isn’t going to be the only town using his technology — Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh have placed orders and the inventor claims that he is in talks with the Department of Homeland Security.

“This is not a system with spook technology,” Harwood tells WXYZ News. To placate that argument, however, one must be comfortable knowing that their every move and whisper is recorded and monitored by a network of computers between posts that can be controlled by a central hub, iPhone or tablet.

“The transformation of street lights into surveillance tools for Homeland Security purposes will only serve to heighten concerns that the United States is fast on the way to becoming a high-tech police state,” Infowars reported recently. Even abroad, London’s Daily Mail has singled out the project for infringing on civil liberties.

As a backlash began to hit Intellistreets, the company removed a YouTube video that offered an eerie insight into the surveillance capabilities, touts itself as “The solution for all college campuses” and discusses the system’s ability to store and analyze data. 

As of November, Farmington Hills has nearly a dozen of the posts, which was afforded through $791,300 in federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) funds the city was awarded in 2009.

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