The city of Beech Grove is supposedly getting city-wide wireless internet service by the end of this year. We were supposed to have it by the end of last year, but the end of last year came and went and the deadline became this year with not a word of acknowledgment. Well, you know how it is in Oceania. How much it will cost, how fast it will be, what kind of security it will use — the answers to all these questions remain closely guarded secrets.

What we do know, though, is that the police and fire departments will get their own special wifi network for, among other uses, a city-wide network of surveillance cameras. The city originally planned to provide civilian access to the cameras so, like, parents could watch their kids walk to school. No, really. So if a child molester snatched up their kids they’d see it on the camera and could phone the police immediately, see? The city scrapped that plan, though, so the parents of Beech Grove will have to spy on their children without the government’s help. Oh well.

Anyway, we received a fake newspaper from the mayor the other day that’s all stories about how great he is, and the story about the wifi plan included this delightful passage:

According to the fire chief, anyone concerned about the “big brother” factor needs to be aware that since 9/11, measures taken by the federal government have changed the landscape of what already is monitored in this country.

Oh yeah, the great American pastime of invoking 9/11 to justify some bullshit has finally reached my very own hometown. This is a good excuse, though. Fire Chief Dennis Buckley, he’s not going to tell you we need cameras to spy on terrorists. We know there are no terrorists in Beech Grove. (Although the Department of Fatherland Security evidently once contacted Buckley at three in the morning to ask about a tanker truck parked at a chemical company. So we don’t have terrorists, but we do have tanker trucks at chemical companies, which is pretty close!) He’s just pointing out that the NSA is already listening to your phone calls, reading your email and peering at you through satellite-mounted cameras, so what difference does it make if the BGPD peers at you through its own cameras? You’re already living in a police state — Beech Grove just wants to join a party that’s already going wild.

We’re apparently never going to get the cameras installed anyway, though, because nobody can agree who should pay for them. Thank Jebus for incompetent government, I guess.