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URGENT: NCIS is Pressuring Private Businesses to Censor Your Public Views of San Diego Bay To the San Diego Community, For years, San Diego Web Cam has provided free, real-time views of our beautiful waterfront for tourists, sailors, and residents. Recently, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began pressuring the private businesses that host these cameras, requesting that they either shut them down or "adjust" them to hide naval activity. While they claim this is for "national security," the reality is that these cameras show only a fraction of what any person standing on the waterfront can see. This is an attempt to censor public information that has been openly available for decades. Below, I am publishing the full NCIS letter for complete transparency, followed by my point-by-point response to their claims. Full NCIS Letter: As a valued member of the San Diego waterfront community, I am reaching out to you regarding the live-stream webcams currently operating at the following locations: Tom Ham’s Lighthouse Bali Hai Restaurant Mike Hess Brewing Fathom Bistro and Tackle Due to the current threat environment, the presence of these live-stream cameras has become a critical Operational Security (OPSEC) issue. While we understand these cameras are intended for weather monitoring, maritime traffic, and tourism, they unintentionally provide adversaries with a free, 24/7 surveillance network overlooking sensitive naval installations. The OPSEC Risk to Ship Movements By continuously observing when U.S. Navy vessels arrive, depart, enter dry dock, or load supplies, foreign intelligence can remotely track our ship movements in near-real-time. This persistent surveillance allows them to map out deployment timelines, identify fleet vulnerabilities, and determine our overall combat readiness—building a highly accurate "pattern of life" for our forces without ever needing to deploy traditional spies or expensive satellites. Proposed Solutions for Security We rely on our private industry partners to help protect national security and our service members. We kindly ask that you reach out to those businesses or the San Diego harbor authority and determine if installing the cameras was part of the lease agreement with San Diego Harbor authority/city. If not part of any agreement or contract, we would like to ask if they can cease any agreement with San Diego Webcam owner in regards to the installation of cameras directed toward naval facilities or work with the camera owner to implement the following small broadcasting adjustments: Shift Camera Angles: Redirects the field of view away from sensitive piers and naval assets. Implement a 24-Hour Delay: Removes the real-time footage value for anyone trying to track immediate movements. Lower Video Resolution : Prevents adversaries from analyzing specific equipment or ship modifications. These adjustments allow the public to continue enjoying the beautiful San Diego waterfront while actively preventing adversaries from gathering actionable intelligence on our fleet. It is important to emphasize that this request is entirely voluntary. We are not ordering any establishment to take actions they are not comfortable with, nor are we attempting to infringe on any business's legal rights or the public's right to enjoy the waterfront. Our goal is simply to share the security implications of these feeds and invite you to join us in protecting our service members. Thank you for your time, your understanding, and your continued support of our service members and the San Diego naval community. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you further. Very Respectfully, Sameer Abdelmottlep Special AgentNCISCT/CI/Force Protection/UAS Investigations San Diego, CA -=-=-= My public point-by-point response: 1. “Due to the current threat environment, the presence of these live-stream cameras has become a critical Operational Security (OPSEC) issue.” The letter points to the “current threat environment”—referring to the conflict with Iran as well as the persistent threats from China. While these threats are real and serious, the environment has not suddenly made public waterfront views dangerous. These exact cameras have operated openly for 26 years. Ship movements in San Diego Bay have never been hidden, nor can they be. The reality is that it is impossible to hide the movement of massive naval vessels when they are operating in the middle of a major city; they are visible to thousands of people every single day. 2. The cameras “unintentionally provide adversaries with a free, 24/7 surveillance network overlooking sensitive naval installations.” This claim fundamentally misrepresents what these cameras actually see. To be clear: our cameras do not provide views of Naval Base San Diego. While we have views of Carrier Row and parts of North Island that are visible to anyone with a view of the water, including passengers on tour boats, the primary secure base is not visible on our streams. Now, consider the scale of visibility: if NCIS is concerned about the "surveillance" provided by a few restaurant webcams, they must reckon with the fact that thousands of private homes, offices, and hotels across the city have these exact same views and much more, including views deep into the base. Are we now to believe that every window facing the bay is a security breach? Are we going to cover the windows of every hotel guest and order residents to look away from their own backyards? I grew up in a house with a direct view of the bay; we had a telescope in the living room. Even as a child, I could watch ship arrivals and supply loading in crystal clarity. Any motivated observer with a smartphone or a small boat in the harbor can see everything these cameras show. A professional intelligence agency would never rely on a public restaurant webcam when, with a nation-state budget and very little effort, they can easily gain so much more than what these cameras offer. 3. “The OPSEC Risk to Ship Movements” — tracking arrivals, departures, and "patterns of life." This claim is absurd on its face. Public AIS (Automatic Identification System) ship-tracking data already broadcasts vessel positions, speeds, and movements to the entire world in real time. This data is transmitted by the ships themselves and is far more precise than any webcam. Additionally: Security Measures: San Diego Web Cam has long implemented specific security measures—including a varying delay in our feeds—specifically so our feed cannot be used to trigger an immediate event. There are other measures we implement, which would not be appropriate to publish here. Public Access: Anyone sitting at a restaurant table or standing anywhere with a line of sight to the waterfront sees the same activity and much more. Satellite Imagery: Commercial satellites provide higher-resolution imagery on demand. It is worth noting that the "investigators" at NCIS have never once contacted me. I would have gladly explained the comprehensive security measures we have in place had they reached out. To this day, they have not returned my calls or emails. Ever. The history of these "security" requests suggests a pattern of using OPSEC as a justification for goals that are not actually about security. In the past, NCIS cited "security concerns" to shut down the Cabrillo National Monument webcam. They didn't reach out after the embarrassing "Warship Chicken" near-miss incident; instead, they shut down the Cabrillo camera one day before the report about the incident came out. Ironically, the Navy College actually uses our footage of that incident to train our sailors. Later, after we set up a camera at Kona Kai to replace the Cabrillo feed and capture the bay entrance, NCIS moved to shut that one down immediately after it captured the USS Pickney in the channel wobbling significantly after a retrofit—leading to widespread public criticism. In those instances, it became evident that the issue was not about foreign adversaries, but about avoiding public scrutiny. As noted by Forbes (forbes.sdwc.link), these actions appeared more aimed at protecting the Navy's reputation than protecting the fleet. While I do not know the specific motivation behind this latest request, this history—combined with the facts detailed here—makes it difficult to accept their current "security" concerns at face value. When I visited the Cabrillo National Monument to record a video after that shutdown, I found Chinese nationals openly taking pictures of our attack submarines in the exact areas we had already been blocking out on the webcam feed. They didn’t start doing that because the camera was gone; they were already there. They are still there. 4. Proposed Solutions — Shift Camera Angles, 24-Hour Delay, or Lower Video Resolution. These suggestions would destroy the utility of the cameras: Shift angles: Blinds the public to the very views people tune in to see. 24-hour delay: Eliminates real-time weather and the emotional moments of ship homecomings that families rely on. Lower resolution: Makes the stream useless for the public while still allowing basic ship identification for any adversary. None of these "adjustments" reduce the real-world visibility that exists from public vantage points. They only hurt San Diego’s tourism and community connection. 5. “This request is entirely voluntary… not ordering… not infringing on legal rights…” The language is polite, but an official NCIS letter citing “critical OPSEC” carries immense pressure. Businesses and harbor authorities feel it. In this context, "voluntary" is often a euphemism for de facto mandatory. 6. Real-world example: Kona Kai Resort Just look at Kona Kai Resort. They shut down our webcam after a single phone call from NCIS. I was there, and it was clear: they were fearing the repercussions and the public backlash of not complying with a national security request. They told me to remove it immediately after the Forbes article was published. One phone call, and a public service intended to replace the lost Cabrillo view -your view- vanished. The Striking Irony: In the name of defending America against regimes infamous for heavy-handed censorship and the suppression of information, NCIS is asking private businesses to adopt that very same playbook: restrict open, public views that have always been freely available. The openness that makes America different and stronger is being undermined here. A matter of principle and public trust: This administration came into power with a clear promise to end government censorship and restore transparency. If we are serious about that promise, we should not be discussing how to censor more of our waterfront. Instead, we should be talking about restoring the public view at Cabrillo National Monument, which was taken down under the same false pretenses of "security" after an incident embarassing to the Navy. A request to the San Diego community: Please support the businesses that support us—the restaurants and venues that keep these public webcams running. We love our country and would never do anything to jeopardize its safety. But protecting America also means protecting our rights. Every single one of them. Once those rights are surrendered, they are exceptionally difficult to recover. If NCIS succeeds in taking down these cameras, I will simply set up more—on cars parked on public streets. These are public views. The premise that removing a few restaurant webcams makes the fleet invisible is flagrantly absurd. Bottom Line: Shutting down public views does not make our Navy safer; it only reduces transparency and the enjoyment of San Diego’s waterfront. As these cameras show only a fraction of the visibility available to any person on the waterfront, the logic behind these requests is fundamentally flawed, as noted in the coverage by Forbes (forbes.sdwc.link). We remain willing to discuss this with NCIS or the harbor authority, but we will not voluntarily cripple these streams based on unpersuasive concerns. The San Diego waterfront belongs to all of us. Protect it. Sincerely, Barry Bahrami San Diego Web Cam @RealNCIS @realDonaldTrump @HarmeetKDhillon @fox5sandiego @nbcsandiego @KPBSnews @10News @CBS8 @BFeatherNBC @SarahEalegre @LittleJoeTV @JournoGeoffZ @mercoglianos @grobbins @KToropin @NextNavy @portofsandiego @lookner @CBSNewsNatDesk #censorship @IJ @pjaicomo @DonaldJTrumpJr @POTUS

The scenes atop Mammoth Mountain are quite frightening! Winter weather alerts remain in effect with additional snowfall expected through Wednesday boosting the Sierra snowpack!🗻 #CAwx