Part One - The TIPS Program
Down the Memory Hole: Operation
TIPS Website Deleted. At some point prior to 20 November 2002, the federal government
deleted the portion of the Citizen Corps Website dealing with the citizen-snitch program Operation
TIPS. This was undoubtedly because the Homeland Security Act, which had passed the House at
that point, specifically canned TIPS. Section 808 of the act, which became federal law,
states: "Any and all activities of the Federal Government to implement the proposed component
program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) are
hereby prohibited." (Of course, this doesn't prohibit a similar program with a different name
from being created.)
Feds' Spying Plan Fades to
Black. TIPS was quietly killed with the passage of the Homeland Security Act.
Editor's Note:
So TIPS is a dead issue. It didn't stand up to public scrutiny. But don't
ever forget this was attempted!
US planning
to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies: 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% of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
Report TIPS informants. The
USA is building a program where over a million Americans will act as informants about any suspicious activity they
observe among their neighbours and the people they visit in a professional capacity. Your mail carrier,
your meter reader — all can now be federal informants through the Terrorism Information and
Prevention System.
U.S. government doesn't trust
Americans: The latest example of the government's alarming plans to target the entire population
for more scrutiny is the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS. Interestingly, the program
came to light not through the reporting of any U.S. press outlets, but through a report in the Sydney Morning
Herald in Australia (above) and linked by WorldNetDaily.
Monitor Thy Neighbor: Americans
are beginning to understand that many precious liberties have been put in jeopardy by the government's rush to
enact new laws in the wake of September 11th. Federal law enforcement agencies now have broad
authority to conduct secret, warrantless searches of homes; monitor phone and internet activity; access
financial records; and undertake large-scale tracking of American citizens through huge databases. We're
told this is necessary to fight the unending war on terror, but in truth the federal government has been
seeking these powers for years.
Spying: The American Way of
Life? Last month's revelation that President Bush wants hundreds of millions of dollars to
invent innovative ways to spy on Americans was greeted not with suspicion, but shoulder-shrugging
indifference. "Americans are not prepared to sacrifice their privacy and civil liberties after
Sept. 11, although their political leaders are prepared to do so for them."
A Site to Despise Untrained
Spies: The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a website for people to protest the Bush
administration's citizen informant program, which would enlist civilians nationwide to report suspicious
behavior by their fellow Americans. The ACLU charges that the Terrorist Information and Prevention System
(TIPS), which is expected to launch this fall, is a massive invasion of privacy.
America: a sissified
nation: Benjamin Franklin warned, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." But that's what the Bush administration and
Congress have asked of Americans -- to give up essential liberty for safety that's not even guaranteed.
By not being fully appreciative of the fact that it's Washington, not Osama bin Laden, that represents the
greatest threat to both liberty and security, we've gone along with the agenda.
Under Fire, Justice Shrinks TIPS
Program: Justice Department officials have decided to scale back the controversial Operation
TIPS program before it even begins, saying yesterday that they no longer plan to ask thousands of mail carriers,
utility workers and others with access to private homes to report suspected terrorist activity.
New "watch" program
poses troubling privacy issues: The Justice Department's Terrorism Information and Prevention
System (TIPS) goes beyond encouraging the public to report questionable behavior. By enlisting a handpicked
group of workers, some with access to private information, the program threatens Americans' privacy rights.
A War Against the American
People: The Bush administration is putting in place the neighborhood informant system used by
the infamous Stasi, the communist East German secret police. Bush's plan, known as TIPS, Terrorism
Information and Prevention System, intends to turn one out of every 24 Americans into a government spy
reporting on their fellow citizens. The results in the United States will be the same as in East
Germany. Jealousies, rivalries, misperceptions and inflamed imaginations will result in the reporting of
many innocent people, who will be investigated, questioned, detained and, on occasion, framed.
Planned volunteer-informant corps elicits
'1984' fears: As part of the country's war against terrorism, the Bush administration by next
month wants to recruit a million letter carriers, utility workers and others whose jobs allow them access to
private homes into a contingent of organized government informants.
ACLU: Operation TIPS
Breeds Peeping Toms. The government is organizing a program to encourage millions of Americans --
including utility workers and letter carriers -- to be on the lookout for suspicious activity and to
report anything unusual.
Justice mum about citizen-snooping
program: The Bush administration says information published this week regarding a new government
informant program was "premature" and that officials are nowhere near ready to implement it.
Postal
Service Won't Join TIPS Program: The Postal Service has decided not to take part in a government
program touted as a tip service for authorities concerned with terrorism, but which is being assailed as a
scheme to cast ordinary Americans as "peeping Toms."
Warning! The Post Office could
report YOU as a drug dealer or a terrorist.: The next time you go to the Post Office to purchase
a money order, you could get secretly reported to the federal government as a potential drug dealer, terrorist,
or money-launderer.
"In the continuing search for ways to build character in the leaders of tomorrow, some
favor snitchlines: "Cedar Rapids police are believed to be the first in Iowa to create a student hot
line to take tips on illegal activity. Teens who call about classmates they believe to have alcohol,
drugs or weapons on school property get $50 if the police recover anything."
Quoted from Zero-tolerance
spiral.
Website
for Operation TIPS Quietly Changes: At some point during the resulting
denunciations of this Stalinesque plan, the text on the TIPS Website was changed.
Part Two - Know Your Customer
Patriot Act: Nationwide,
banks want to know more about you: Banking customers across the nation will notice stricter new
identification rules for opening new accounts, taking out loans and other financial transactions, beginning
[10/21/2002].
"Know Your Customer" Frequently
Asked Questions (FAQs)
"Know Your Customer" as Incoherent Privacy
Policy: This proposal sidesteps the Fourth Amendment, it will not make our streets or banks
safer, and it eerily recalls Communist China, where neighborhood committees of retired communist party members
reported on their neighbors.
Banking with Big Brother: US
banks must monitor their customers and alert federal officials to "suspicious" behavior under a government
plan that has drawn fire as an Orwellian intrusion into Americans' privacy.
Know Your Customer: Know Your Comrade.
The next time you go to the bank, you may find your banker demanding to know where you got your money, how you
got it, and whether your transaction was a "normal" one. If a new "know your customer" rule proposed by
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation goes through, banks would be required to collect that information
from customers, monitor their accounts, and report "suspicious" activities. And if you don't give the
bank the information it wants, you could forfeit your account.
EFF
Comments to FDIC on draft "Know Your Customer" bank surveillance regs: The Know Your
Customer proposal regards every bank patron as a potential suspect and eliminates
financial privacy by inspecting all banking transactions and establishing customer profiles.
Victory: Know
Your Customer Dies.
The Government Still Wants Your
Bank to Spy on You: "Know Your Customer" is Not Dead Yet!
Privacy Busters: Big Bank is
watching: New FDIC Regs Require Banks to Violate Customers Privacy. This massive new
program -- euphemistically called 'Know Your Customer' -- would convert our nation's banks into wholly owned
subsidiaries of the government-wide movement to invade every aspect of Americans' privacy.
"Know Your Customer" regulations go
global? Switzerland-based commission recommends intrusive banking practices
Update:
Bank
on it — your every transaction triggers snooping. I am not an Eliot Spitzer fan.
The now-former New York governor and I have disagreed privately and publicly on any number of issues, mostly
involving questions of prosecutorial abuse. Still, I have great concern with the manner in which his fall
from grace was orchestrated, and with the federal laws and regulations on which it was based. The sad saga
of Spitzer should concern every American, or at least all those who maintain accounts at any financial
institution or who engage in any form of electronic financial transactions.
Related material:
The snitch list.
Ann Lambert spent three years behind bars on drug charges following anonymous tips to police. Ever since
she walked out of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville in 2003, she's been going after the type
of people who she says victimized her.
Police to
search for guns in homes. Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in
high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their
children's bedrooms.
High School To Pay Student
Informants For Tips On Campus Crime. Using revenue from its candy and
soda sales [which many other schools are trying to ban], Model High School plans to
pay up to $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus.
Parents Urged
to Ask About Guns in Other People's Homes. Anti-gun groups are observing the fifth annual
National ASK Day — ASK, an acronym for "asking saves kids." Anti-gun activists say with most
children now out of school, the question parents should be asking is this: "Is there a gun where your
child plays?"
Is it Right to 'Spy' on a Neighbor?
Apparently these [internet] sites are being used to tattle on other people. One site claims to be ready to reveal
bad drivers and people who don't know how to park well, one to uncover the identity of the person who is stealing
newspapers in the wee hours of the morning before the neighborhood is awake to get their morning editions, and
one to highlight litterbugs.
The
Snoop Next Door. The sites documenting minor wrongs are the flip side of an online vigilantism
movement that tackles meatier social issues. Community organization Cop Watch Los Angeles encourages
users to send in stories and pictures of people being brutalized or harassed by police, for posting on the
Web. The governor of Texas plans to launch a site this year that will air live video of the border, in
hopes that people will watch and report illegal crossings.
In England:
'Environmental
volunteers' will be encouraged to spy on their neighbours. Councils are recruiting residents to
report anyone who drops litter, fails to recycle their rubbish properly, or who allows their dog to foul the
streets. Advertisements looking for people to sign up for the unpaid "environmental volunteer" jobs have
been posted across the country in recent months.
Children
aged eight enlisted as council snoopers. Children as young as eight have been recruited by councils
to "snoop" on their neighbours and report petty offences such as littering, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. The
youngsters are among almost 5,000 residents who in some cases are being offered £500 rewards if they provide
evidence of minor infractions.
Information Fusion Centers and Privacy. Fusion Centers are
intelligence databases that collect information on ordinary citizens.
Speaking of snitches...
Citizens use Internet to spy on, thwart
terrorists. Shannen Rossmiller finds early mornings are best for hunting terrorists. When
it's 4 a.m. in this one-stoplight prairie town, it's 3 p.m. in, say, Karachi, Pakistan, the
sweltering hours just before the evening call to prayer. That's when Rossmiller, while her husband and
three children sleep, finds the Internet chat rooms and bulletin boards frequented by radical Muslims and jihad
warriors are busiest. It is when Rossmiller pursues her deadly serious hobby: Citizen cyber-spy.
Editor's Note:
Snitching on your neighbor might be a good thing when your neighbor is a traitor, a wahhabi and a terrorist.
Maybe you could buy him a wireless internet hub as a housewarming gift. I think you know what I mean.
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