US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

By Ritt Goldstein
July 15 2002

The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens
as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.

The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will
have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany
through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of
4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".

Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage earlier
this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, large-scale
investigations of US citizens.

As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being pursued as part of the so-called war
against terrorism. It is a Department of Justice project.

Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are
being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to
homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees,
truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted
recruits.

A pilot program, described on the government Web site http://www.citizencorps.gov,
is scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants
participating in the first stage. Assuming the program is initiated in the
10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million informants for a total
population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 people.

Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic
states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on
Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some
informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having
fabricated their reports.

Present Justice Department procedures mean that informant reports will enter
databases for future reference and/or action. The information will then be
broadly available within the department, related agencies and local police
forces. The targeted individual will remain unaware of the existence of the
report and of its contents.

The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to be searched without
that person being informed that a search was ever performed, or of any
surveillance devices that were implanted.

At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-ordinated by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was given sweeping new powers,
including internment, as part of the Reagan Administration's national
security initiatives. Many key figures of the Reagan era are part of the
Bush Administration.

The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in secret, was another
Reagan national security initiative.

Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the
movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden since
1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of
life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts. His
application has been supported by the European Parliament, five of Sweden's
seven big political parties, clergy, and Amnesty and other rights groups.

http://www.8thdaycenter.org/090500.html