By: D. H. Williams @ 4:14 PM - EST
Cable provider Bright House Networks launched Operation Bright Eyes in 2005 in Tampa, Florida in cooperation with local and federal law enforcement agencies. So far more than 900 cable service technicians have been trained to act as the eyes and ears of the government by using tattle tale utility workers as “secret police” informing on paying customers and circumventing that pesky Fourth Amendment.
The program according to Bright House company officials has been so successful they have expanded it to Bakersfield, Orlando and Detroit in 2008. As of August 8th, 2008 Duane Brodt of Coles Marketing Communications is proud to announce the snooping program will target cable customers in Indiana.
The first Indiana launch of Operation Bright Eyes was in March after Indianapolis Metro Police Department trained more than 130 service technicians who work in Indianapolis. Two weeks later, the program launched in Carmel after Carmel Police Department trained more than 25 local service technicians. And in June, Operation Bright Eyes launched in Hendricks County following the training of nearly 25 service technicians by Brownsburg Police Department.
“Nearly 25 Bright House Networks service technicians will undergo special training Monday morning in Marion to become extra sets of eyes, ears and helping hands for Grant County residents and local law enforcement and emergency response agencies.” Says, Brodt.
These cable “spies” who receive a few hours of training are not required to notify customers that they are acting as secret informants for various government agencies. They can then act as “Confidential Informants” and with their testimony law enforcement agencies can then ask a judge for a search warrant of your home.
These government sanctioned peeping Toms are part of a larger national program called TIPS, the Terrorism Information and Prevention System the goal of the program is to recruit one million utility workers to spy on American citizens.
“Service technicians are in constant communication with our local dispatcher and with the training provided by our Grant County law enforcement agencies, they’ll know what to do and who to contact should someone need help,” said Cal Blumhorst, area manager who oversees Bright House Networks’ operations in Grant County.
So remember the next time you invite a utility worker into your home you are aiding in the illegal search of your premises and to add insult to injury you will be paying for the “privilege.”
If you oppose these illegal spying operations perhaps you should contact Bright House Networks (661)-323-4892 Email: bakersfield.customercare@mybrighthouse.com or Duane Brodt of Coles Marketing Communications his number is (317)-571-0051 Cell: (317)-417-9322 Email: duane.brodt@colesmarketing.com. More Bright House numbers HERE.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
-Benito Mussolini
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12 comments ↓
What was it we learned in the schoolyard when the geek who went running to teacher when he heard little Johnny saying a bad word? Oh yeah, he got the living fuck kicked out of him after school.
I wonder what’s going to happen to these Jr. Barney Fifes when they up the ante and get outed? A subsequent arrest or having one’s children sent off with the CPS pedophiles will create some rather unfortunate circumstances for the scumbag snitch.
Great job, chief. Old news since the program is up and running for two years. Highlights of the program; helping those stranded on the road, reporting break-ins to homes, helping reconnect lost children with their parents, reporting residential fires, helping sick elderly people get care, and reporting emergency situations and informing police and fire. If you’re not doing anything illegal in your home, why would you balk and inviting a service technician trained to help you and your neighbors and your entire community inside your home? Sounds like you’re hiding something and maybe Homeland Security or the local cops should knock on your door and discover what? Pot? Crack? Kiddie Porn? Your mom tied up in the basement? Get a clue, Roy. These people are out looking out for you and yours and if you dont like it then stop being paranoid and clean up your own life.
Regarding the ONE post your idiotic blog received, no one gets their kids taken away from them unless they deserve it. No one gets arrested unless they deserve it. Again, be a good parent and conform to the laws and you wont be reported and wont be behind bars. Dork.
Yes, of course, the ‘if you have nothing to hide then why do you care’ defense. GG.
Well, what a comeback. What is exactly your point? I have no crack in my home, so I can’t get busted. I have no kiddie porn in my home. so I couldnot get busted. I don’t do drugs, i don’t rape women, I have license plates on my cars, I pay my taxes. WTF is the point of your “If you have nothing to hide then why do you care defense” argument? Get real.
further, dumb**s, justify your point. answer this .. if you live by the laws, then when could you ever have anyone knocking at your door ready to cuff you? if you lobby for better laws if you deem what is on the books unjust, then again, what is your gripe? go change the world. but until you do, put up and shut up.. with just some quick clicks and review of what is out there, this program would be great for my community and i would have not a problmm with it.
News Hound,
You must be part of the Neo-Con agenda with a post like that. I for one was shocked to hear this. Your argument is the same they use in China when defending putting several cameras on each block capable of instant facial recognition and data mining. It is people like you who desperately need to read the constitution. Conservatives like you are always the first to mention the slippery slope when it comes to morality in America. However, you seem to turn a blind eye in situations like this. This is just the start of things. Pick up a copy of Orsen Well’s 1984 and let me know if you still feel this way.
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect Liberty when the Government’s purposes are benificient….The greatest dangers to Liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-mening but without understanding.” - Justice Brandeis in Olmstead v. U.S., 277 US 438, 479 (1927)
“They that can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither Liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin
“The best antidote for crime is Justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more Justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.” - Gerry Spence “With Justice For None” p.124
“In this country we embrace the myth that we are still a democracy when we know that we are not a democracy, that we are not free, that the government does not serve us but subjugates us. Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, has become the people’s master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed — first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf. We did not care about the weak or about the strays. They were not a part of the flock. We did not care about those on the outer edges. Now we must look the wolf squarely in the eye. That we did not do so when the first of us was ripped and torn and eaten was the first wrong.
That none of us have felt responsible for having lost our freedom has been a part of an insidious progression. In the beginning the attention of the flock was directed not to the marauding wolf but to our own deviant members within the flock. We rejoiced when the wolf destroyed them for they were our enemies. We were told that the weak lay under the rocks while we faced the blizzards to rustle our food, and we did not care when the wolf took them. We argued that they deserved it. When one of our flock faced the wolf alone it was always eaten. Each of us was afraid of the wolf, but as a flock we were not afraid. Indeed, the wolf cleansed the herd by destroying the weak and dismembering the aberrant element within. As time went by, strangely the herd felt more secure under the rule of the wolf. It believed that by belonging to this wolf it would remain safe from all the other wolves. But we were eaten just the same.
No one knows better than children of the Holocaust how the lessons of history must never be forgotten. Yet Americans, whose battle cry was once, “Give me liberty or give me death,” have sat placidly by as a new king was crowned. In America a new king was crowned by the shrug of our shoulders when our neighbors were wrongfully seized. A new king was crowned when we capitulated to a regime that was no longer sensitive to people but to non-people - to corporations, to money and to power. The new king was crowned when we turned our heads as the poor and the forgotten and the damned were rendered mute and defenseless, not because they were evil but because, in the scheme of our lives, they seemed unimportant, not because they were essentially dangerous but because they were essentially powerless. The new king was crowned when we cheered the government on as it prosecuted the progeny of our ghettos and filled our prisons with black men whose first crime was that they were born in the ghettos. We cheered the new king on as it diluted our right to be secure in our homes against unlawful searches and secure in the courts against unlawful evidence. We cheered the new king on because we were told that our sacred rights were but “loopholes” by which our enemies, the murderers and rapists and thieves and drug dealers, escaped. We were told that those who fought for our rights, the lawyers, were worse than the thieves who stole from us in the night, that our juries were irresponsible and ignorant and ought not be trusted. We watched with barely more than a mumble as the legal system that once protected us became populated with judges who were appointed by the new king. At last the new king was crowned when we forgot the lessons of history, that when the rights of our enemies have been wrested from them, our own rights have been lost as well, for the same rights serve both the citizen and criminal.”
[ From the book entitled:"From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America" by Gerry Spence, Pgs.7-10]
In the battle for Liberty,
- TJL
If your not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Hmmmmm I bet you don’t mind being asked for your I.D. when just strolling down the street. And I bet being pulled over on your way home from work, And having your I.D. insurance and tags ran don’t bother you either. Well they bother the hell out of me. You see I believe in freedom. Not that thing you only believe in on the Fourth of July. But real actual freedom. That says leave me the hell alone unless you actually see me commiting a crime. You know the FBI put out a pamplet a few years ago that said anyone that talks about their Constitutionally protected rights might be a Homegrown Terrorist. What the hell. We can no longer talk about our rights? We can no longer tell someone to back off of our rights? They are not the goverments to do with as they please. Read your Constitution. If you continue down the road you are traveling then you will have no rights. You will be a pawn of the State. And you will do as you are told. As for me and my family we choose FREEDOM.
News Hound scares me. It is exactly his attitude that makes it easier for Big Brother to erode our liberties. Perhaps he didn’t read about the FBI now being able to investigate anyone just for the hell of it. There need be not even a hint of wrong doing for them to do so. This is not the America I went to Vietnam for.
Hi John Shriver - I know what you mean brother. This is NOT the reason I served either.
News Hound sounds like govt. agitator - certainly don’t take his bait.
As to story, whether 2 years old or not, it’s appalling and I believe that if a utility worker is trained to look around your house for something other than what they are they for they should tell you so before entering. Things are going too far here in the US now as they make all citizens look more like criminals every day. There’s going to be a revolution one of these days when people finally decide they have had enough.
I am amazed that people like News Hound find nothing wrong with this type of spying in a Democracy. His/her comments that ‘if you have nothing to hide you shouldn’t worry’ are ridiculous to say the least. There are numerous cases where the Police have made arrests based on false accusations, mistaken identities and revenge and these people are Police! To say that we should trust private citizens to make the correct choice as to whether something is illegal or suspicious when the Police can’t even do it is naive.
I have nothing to hide in my home or actions but I definitely don’t want my Cable guy or any other representative of the Corporate work force to make that decision as to whether something they see or hear is illegal or not.
News Hound needs to go back and read History as to the rise of the Nazi Party and remember that the majority of the victims of the Gestapo and the SS that wound up in the Camps were turned in by their fellow neighbours and public servants.
It is truly scary that in a so called ‘free’ Democracy we would even allow this type of spying to go on much less endorse it as something that is good for Society.
How do I change my avatar?
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