This Land, Your Land

The U.S. Forest Service routinely positions video cameras in National Forests to monitor "illicit activities," according to a report last month by the Island Packet of Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The Island Packet got the story after a man camping with his daughter and a friend in Francis Marion National Forest stumbled over a wire that led to a video camera and antenna.

Heather Frebe, public affairs officer with the Forest Service in Atlanta, told the newspaper that the camera was part of a law enforcement investigation. "She said that surveillance cameras have been used for 'numerous years' to provide for public safety and to protect the natural resources of the forest. Without elaborating, she said images of people who are not targets of an investigation are 'not kept.'"

Marijuana cartels use remote land in national forests as well as in national parks for large growing operations, according to published reports.

"The enforcement of federal drug laws on the national forests is fundamentally related to visitor safety, employee safety and natural resource protection," the Forest Service says on its Web site. "Currently, most marijuana illicitly grown on federal public lands in the West and Southwest is tied directly to Mexican drug cartels and criminal gangs. These criminal gangs are armed and dangerous and have confronted and intimidated hikers and hunters at gunpoint. The Forest Service works aggressively with state, county and other federal agencies to eliminate this criminal activity from national forests."

As for the legality of cameras, the Island Packet says, "In general, the courts have held that people typically have no reasonable level of privacy in public places, such as banks, streets, open fields in plain view and on public lands, such as national parks and national forests. In various cases, judges ruled that a video camera is effectively an extension of a law enforcement officer's eyes and ears. In other words, if an officer can eyeball a campground in person, it's OK to station a video camera in his or her place."

There are more than 1.2 million acres of land in national forests in North Carolina.