The Baltimore Sun reports the city’s police department is defending a new surveillance program after facing several questions about the practice. A privately owned company is strapping several cameras onto a small Cessna airplane, recording hundreds of hours of footage, and flying about 8,000 feet above the city. The footage is sent to analysts, who can track individuals and vehicles across Baltimore. Police spokesman T.J. Smith said the program is an extension of the existing network of street-level CitiWatch cameras, but not everyone is buying it. "They're trying to make people calm by saying, 'Don't worry, this is just an expansion of our CCTV program.' It's not," said legal consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice on aerial surveillance issues, Anne McKenna. "This is not a camera pole that sits in one location and films people walking back and forth."
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