Infowars.com
Downtown Buffalo residents were shocked yesterday to see that a high-tech police guard tower had been erected to spy on Thanksgiving revelers using the same technology deployed against illegal aliens on the border.
The SkyWatch command tower is elevated 30 feet above ground level to give police a panoramic view of the streets and is fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment. The manufacturer of the device boasts that the tower can be used for “civilian security operations” and “crowd control”.
“It allows us to be able to see in various directions. The cameras have amazing clarity and it’s an expansion of our police camera surveillance system,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told WKBW News.
The spy tower is basically just a high-tech version of an almost identical-looking guard tower from a detention camp, for example the one used at Guantanamo Bay used to watch over terrorists.
The justification behind police using SkyWatch is to “keep everyone safe” during Thanksgiving. The tower was funded by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
The guard towers are not only being used on busy street corners in major cities like Buffalo.
In December 2010, we carried a report of a similar device being set up on a quiet back street in a small town in New Jersey. The tower was situated next to a city park in a low crime area where it remained for several days.
Last year, US lawmakers were given a special demonstration of the Mobile Utility Surveillance Tower (MUST), an elevated monitoring tower similar to SkyWatch that is set to be used by law enforcement in the United States as part of an emergency response to civil unrest.
An anonymous narcotics officer quoted by Homeland Security Newswire admitted that border authorities were “Using this unit basically for national security. We are watching to make sure the violence does not pour onto United States soil.”
“The portable surveillance vehicle has already been purchased by police departments across the United States and it has been deployed along the Texas border by several sheriff’s departments,” stated the HSNW report.
The SkyWatch guard tower currently being used in Buffalo “is also used by Border Patrol on the U.S.-Mexican border,” reports WKBW. Congressman Ron Paul has previously warned that technology used on the border to catch illegal immigrants is now being turned against the American people.