A land of busy TIPsters

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views July 29, 2002]

The row goes on over the latest government plan to recruit millions of American citizens as "domestic informants," who will be expected to keep an eye on fellow citizens and report "suspicious activity." The program is the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), and a pilot version is scheduled to begin in August in 10 cities. Reason magazine writer Brian Doherty, in "An American Stasi," speculates on the program's eventual effectiveness:

These TIPS soldiers have been given the mission to go where the police can't necessarily go, see what the police can't necessarily see, and then report findings to the Justice Department, which will maintain a database of tips. It remains to be seen whether this will save the country from attack, or simply bury bureaucrats in thousands of vague, frightened, meaningless reports that sully the reputations of the innocent. But we have already seen the effects of creating a system of omnipresent government informants who treat all fellow citizens as potential enemies. It used to be called “living behind the Iron Curtain.”

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, a public interest law firm, is more than a little pessimistic about TIPS:

This is George Orwell's "1984." It's an absolutely horrible and very dangerous idea. It's making Americans into government snoops. President Bush wants the average American to do what the FBI should be doing. In the end, though, nothing is going to prevent terrorists from crashing planes into buildings.

Syndicated columnist and author Paul Craig Roberts imagines some of the possible consequences stemming from the power to snoop and tell:

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. Conservative gun owners will be likely targets of anti-gun liberals. Hunters will be reported by animal rights activists. Career rivals and rivals for the attention of a member of the opposite sex will be tempted to nudge each other out of contention with “suspicious activity” reports.

The irresponsible American media will make mountains out of molehills. As hysteria mounts, more people will feel a patriotic duty to report their neighbors. . . .

It is amazing to watch conservatives and patriots cheer on the advent of the Orwellian state. A new bureaucracy will be formed to record suspicious activity reports from the 12 million citizen informants. Once the police state bureaucracy is in place, it will never be dismantled. As Hoover Institution scholar Martin Anderson has pointed out, not even the fearsome Nixon White House was able to abolish a tiny bureaucracy of tea tasters.

Congressman Ron Paul weighs in on TIPS:

This almost might be funny if it were not real. Imagine the rampant abuses possible with a national spy program. Busybodies across the country will clamor to join the effort and act as self-appointed neighborhood vigilantes. Unscrupulous individuals of every stripe will abuse the program by snitching on ex-spouses, personal enemies, and racial groups they don't like. Bickering neighbors will enjoy calling in to report unkempt lawns and barking dogs as sure signs of nefarious activity. I certainly hope the Justice department employs some very patient people to field the flood of useless calls. . . .

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves what kind of society we hope to leave our children and grandchildren. A civilized and free society would not be discussing, much less seriously debating, any proposal to enlist private citizens to act as federal neighborhood snitches.

Writer Justin Raimondo, of antiwar.com, also envisions lots of tomfoolery and mischief:

The nation's busybodies are going to have a field day; every crackpot in the country is going to flock to this program, like flies to fecal matter, eager to get in on the fun. Why, just think of the opportunities it affords the nation's nutballs: everyone they ever hated (ex-girlfriends, ex-husbands, ex-friends, and just random victims) will feel their wrath, and their power. It's a blank check issued to America's obsessives, who are going to do their best to make life miserable for the rest of us.

And, finally, a poster to Declan McCullagh's Politech list offered some humorous ideas on how "TIPsters" should be dealt with. He facetiously proposes that a network of people be formed to identify and make known possible TIPsters, by publicizing their names and addresses and even putting chalk marks on their cars or other property, "so we can spot them coming, avoid socializing with them, refuse them entry onto our land."

Further, he suggests, "The old 'Kilroy' inside a modern international slashed circle would do, though the tatoos on their foreheads might best be in the color of a scarlet letter."

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