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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 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.

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I want my 2 minutes back.

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Paying close attention to suspicious behavior is not facsist.(?) Turning a blind eye to what your neighbors do is just plain stupid. Wether you like it or not we are at war with an enemy we cannot see or hear.We are at a high risk of another attack because we're not paying attention. It is your fucking job as an American to let the authorities be made aware of anything remotely suspicious. Yes I value my freedoms. I also value the lives of my friend's and family.

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The enemy is here and it's not who you think it is!

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[Sarcasm]You mean the enemy isn't those of Middle Eastern descent? [/Sarcasm]

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THEN and NOW
As I sat with members of my community and read the words of The Declaration of Independence on July 4, it struck me that our founding fathers were willing to pledge 'their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor' in the cause of LIBERTY and to protect the fundamental freedoms that they belived were "unalienable."
And then I thought about our current administration and its policies including, but not limited to, the USA Patriot Act), and I realized that it has been asking us sacrifice our liberties in the cause of saving our lives. Seems to me that they've got the message backwards.

Bernard Stein
Merrick
Newsday Letters 7/15/2002

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Mad, so far, you have stated message after message about how you think that your govt. is messing up and how you disagree with what they do. You, ARI, and S/H/I/T should sit down and discuss how you should rule the world.

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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke.

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how dare you compare yourself to the
people who were killed in the WTC, the Pentagon,
Shanksville or overseas. You are NOTHING like
them.

Danny Pearl is someone you would have spit on in life, so don't go making "ultimate sacrifice" bullshit comments and trying to marry yourself and your warped logic to the 9/11 events.

YOU are not a patriot. You are the polor opposite
of a patriot.

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I would have done something if I was on the plane! I have never been "dis-armed" in any "high" security area or plane!

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Oh, I am certain of it, because you are the bravest human on the planet. No one would have gotten anything paSt you, Johnny On-the-spot.

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You know what, TOOL, go fuck yourself sideways, ok? You are a know-nothing loud mouth who has more in common with that other coward, Jello Biafra (someone I once had the displeasure of staying with at a North Carolina waffle house back in the 1980s, as he went on and on with his conspiracy theories), than you do with any of those people on those planes or in those buildings.

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You don't have the balls, or the brains, to do what I have to do on a daily basis, so go to hell, dickless wimp.

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I've seen the truth, asshole. I've seen piles and
piles of it. I've even smelled it, and it's not
the smell you expect when you see it. It throws
you off.

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I belive your name says it all; BIG STUPID!

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stop searching 80 year old-women

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16-45 year-old male of Middle Eastern descent!

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I don't want to rule the world. I would just like to live in American where the Govt follows the rules as set forth in The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of American.

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George Bush and the American government has to concentrate on protecting the American people. If I have to lose some civil liberties in order to prevent another attack that will slaughter thousands of innocent people, then I will gladly give up those liberties, and if the government asked me to be one of the civilian spies, I would gladly do that too.

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Protecting life has to come before protecting liberty

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I find your refering to the proposed safe houses as "concentration camps" to be extremely distasteful.

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