Question for Legal Eagles: Police Surveillance

Mikaela says:
I was driving around yesterday and was suddenly struck -- again -- by the vast number of cameras recording our movements at every intersection.

Does anyone know what permission the FBI has to request the tapes from local police agencies? I'm making the common-sense assumption that the Patriot Act made it legal and easy, if it wasn't previously.

I would love to be wrong. Does anyone know?

Otherwise, I'm thinking, the surveillance society is already here. I guess we can still sneak relatively undetected into the mesa or foothills, but if we stick to the roads, we're visible everywhere. Does anyone else get freaked out by that? I would feel better if there were still some semblance of a legal firewall between local police traffic cameras and the FBI or whatever super-secret national police force we have/will have under our National Security Czar.