There’s a new law enforcement trend sweeping the nation wherein the police arrest citizens who lawfully videotape them and then charge them with wiretapping and other ridiculous offenses.

As crazy as that sounds, it’s true and not just happening to watchdog-types, but speedy motorcyclists wearing helmet cams too.

And it’s only going to get worse as our video technology continues to surge. The Cato Institute made a video about the subject that should frighten all of you.

Photo: Marina Galperina

A food-snatching seagull in the UK was one of the many strange images captured by Google’s all pervasive Street View. The thieving scavenger swooped in and stole someone’s french fry in the seaside city of Brighton and the search engine’s cameras caught the getaway. |Daily Mail|

The Justice Department was even good enough to outline these strategies in a PowerPoint presentation which the watchdog group posted (PDF doc) and summarized:

“The presentation notes that Facebook was “often cooperative with emergency requests” while complaining about Twitter’s short data retention policies and refusal to preserve data without legal process.”

I wonder how Diablo Cody feels about the feds using a screengrab of her account for their presentation?

A public school in Philadelphia has been sued by the parents of a student recently disciplined by the school. The reason for the discipline and subsequent lawsuit? The school issues laptops to all students and apparently it’s been using the webcams to monitor the students away from school, like, AT HOME.

The kid who was disciplined was a tenth grade boy they accused of “inappropriate behavior” in his home, an incident that they witnessed while watching him on the webcam. Even better, they didn’t tell any of the students or their parents that they’d be doing this sort of thing, or that they even had the ability to do it. We don’t even want to know what sort of “inappropriate behavior” the teenage boy was engaged in, but we have a few guesses. |PopFi|