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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 6, 2002 WASHINGTON - In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union called "surreal," the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned "America's Most Wanted" television series. "This is like retaining Arthur Andersen to do all of the SEC's accounting," said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "It's a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector. What's next - the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?" "If it continues to cooperate with...

<p>New York — A type of neighborhood spy program launched by the Bush administration will be up and active this month in 10 cities across the country and some of the citizen spies recruited could be neighborhood truck drivers, utility employees and train conductors.</p>

If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, Republicans would be on the march against Bigger Government and Bigger Spending. Unfortunately, too many prominent Republicans are cottoning up to increased federal control and the increased spending that goes with it. One of the five components of the Citizen Corps, created by the President in January, is Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System). This is designed to be "a nationwide program to help thousands of American truck drivers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, and utility workers report potential terrorist activity." Operation TIPS calls on Americans, in their daily...

<p>Someone in the community has been targeted due to a core characteristic of her identity that cannot be changed.</p> <p>When people in our community fear being assaulted because of who they are, the color of their skin, or who they love it can be a dangerous thing. Hate and bias-related crimes pose unique challenges for victims, law enforcement, criminal justice professionals and the media. The nature of hate and bias crimes threatens our quality of life and detrimentally affects the victim and indeed the entire community. This is why these crimes require a heightened sensitivity from the media and criminal justice professionals.</p>

The Justice Department's vague proposal for a legion of citizen-informants - Operation TIPS - didn't get a warm reception when the DOJ floated the idea recently. Public outcry led House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) to try to kill Operation TIPS in his markup of the Homeland Security Department bill. But it's not dead yet. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on July 22, President Bush - Congress be damned - is going ahead with the program anyway. "The administration is continuing to pursue Operation TIPS," confirmed Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock. Why worry about Operation TIPS? What could possibly...

In China, Cuba, and other countries where dissent to government policies is dangerous, local watch committees in neighborhoods there monitor signs of disloyalty to the state. It almost happened here in the name of homeland defense. As our government's Citizens Corps Web site (www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html) reported in July, we were about to experience similar continual surveillance under "Operation TIPS, administered by the U.S. Department of Justice ... a national system for reporting suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity." A program that will "involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to...

Controversial Operation TIPS appears dead By Cassio Furtado Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Bill passed early Saturday by the House of Representatives appears to kill Operation TIPS, the administration's controversial effort to encourage millions of Americans to report suspected terrorists to authorities. The 200-page bill, which passed by a 295-132 vote, prohibits programs such as the proposed Terrorism Information and Prevention System. TIPS was part of President Bush's recently-released homeland security plan, but it drew fire from Republican conservatives and from the American Civil Liberties Union, which charged that it would encourage "government-sanctioned peeping toms." The House...

Ashcroft urges all Americans to snoop on their neighborsOperation TIPS Issues Handy Home-Spying ChecklistJuly 26, 2002 Borowitz Report  http://www.borowitzreport.com/  Saying that “now is the time for all good Americans to snoop on their neighbors,” Attorney General John Ashcroft today unveiled what he called a “helpful home-spying checklist” as part of the Justice Department’s Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System): Go through your neighbor’s garbage, looking for suspicious foreign food containers. Good foreign food: pizza, chop suey, fish and chips. Bad foreign food: everything else. Hard to tell: French food. Put on a fake moustache and wig, ring your neighbor’s...

Monitor Thy NeighborOpposition to the Patriot Act, legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President last year, is growing. 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...

President Bush Takes TIPSFrom Bob Jones University ByM. Scott McAllister Toogood Reports [Tuesday, July 23, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Perhaps President Bush´s 2000 campaign visit to fundamentalist "Mecca" Bob Jones University rubbed off on him more than anyone could have guessed. Don´t worry. George W. did not declared the Pope an "antichrist" or forbid his daughters to date African-Americans. He hasn´t recanted his misguided characterization of Islam as a "peaceful religion." He hasn´t yet labeled ex-fundamentalist presidential advisor Billy Graham a heretic. Somehow during his short visit to the Greenville, South Carolina campus, George Bush managed to avoid...

Monitor Thy Neighbor Publisher: Middle East News Press Release Network By: Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Posted: 2002-07-23 Opposition to the Patriot Act, legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President last year, is growing. 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...

Congress has been working on legislation to create a militia composed of 'technology experts' who will manage the telecommunications infrastructure in times of national emergency. The Senate bill passed last week emphasizes disaster response, not terror prevention, with such things as patching leaky government servers and databases, setting aside bandwidth and developing interoperable standards for emergency communications, and organizing local teams of geeks ready to lend a hand putting it all back together in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. All that sounds quite reasonable and the initial budget of $35 million refreshingly modest. But before we...

During the Cold War, when the United States faced a really dangerous adversary capable of incinerating our entire country in 30 minutes, we kept to our principles, stressing the virtues of a free society over Soviet communism. The Cold War must have sapped our strength. Now, faced with Muslim terrorists who are nothing in comparison to Soviet ICBMs, we have adopted the methods of our former communist adversaries. 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...

An army of volunteers is lining up behind President George W Bush in his attempt to build an American "home guard" against terror, ignoring the protests of civil liberties groups who have criticised the plan as granting the state a licence to snoop.Postal workers, doormen, television company "cable guys", delivery truck drivers and local shopkeepers are being recruited to become the "eyes and ears" of American domestic security - and they are showing overwhelming enthusiasm for the scheme, called Operation Tips (Terrorism Information and Prevention System).Tips starts next month as Justice Department officials begin recruiting a million Americans for the...

During the Cold War, when the United States faced a really dangerous adversary capable of incinerating our entire country in 30 minutes, we kept to our principles, stressing the virtues of a free society over Soviet communism. The Cold War must have sapped our strength. Now, faced with Muslim terrorists who are nothing in comparison to Soviet ICBMs, we have adopted the methods of our former communist adversaries. 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,...

<p>The fight against terrorism should not entail a police state, or even the precursors of one. That is the heartening message contained in Thursday's rejection by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security of proposals for a mandatory national ID "smart card" – and of the proposal to use ordinary Americans, such as postal workers and utility meter readers, for "domestic surveillance."</p>

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), in his markup of legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, yesterday rejected a national identification card and scrapped a program that would use volunteers in domestic surveillance, according to The Washington Times. Armey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, included language in his markup of the legislation to prohibit the Justice Department from initiating the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, also called Operation TIPS. Armey's bill also would create a "privacy officer" in the Homeland Security Department, which he said was the first ever established by law in a Cabinet...

Operation TIPS, administered by the U.S. Department of Justice and developed in partnership with several other federal agencies, is one of the five component programs of the Citizen Corps. Operation TIPS will be a national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related activity. The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places. The Department of Justice is discussing participation with several industry groups whose workers are ideally suited to help in the anti-terrorism effort because their routines...

Operation TIPS There's an alarmist article about this in the Sydney Morning Herald, written by a man named Ritt Goldstein who--Criswell predicts!--will be dismissed out of hand many as an America hater due to his biography: 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. So I just thought I'd acknowledge that up front. But let's forget Mr. Goldstein for a moment and look at the government's own description of...