Spying eyes

Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange

June 23, 2002

Coming at you sometime this summer will be Operation TIPS — a phalanx of one million well-trained civilian tipsters on the lookout for "suspicious terrorist activity."

Operation TIPS (the Terrorist Information and Prevention System) is part of President Bush's new Citizens Corps — a division of his USA Freedom Corps initiative. Beginning in August 2002, Operation TIPS, a pilot project run out of the Department of Justice, will dispatch one million workers — likely to include truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees and others — to run down and formally report "suspicious terrorist activity."

A few weeks back, the FBI unveiled its new domestic surveillance agenda. According to the Washington Post: "New Justice Department guidelines... give[s] FBI agents latitude to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions without first having to offer evidence of potential criminal activity." The FBI's new powers are in accord with a number of other recent policy changes that are eating away at our civil liberties.

A few months ago William Safire, the dean of conservative columnists, wrote that "in case of an external threat, U.S. leaders are protecting the capital at the cost of every American's personal freedom." Although Safire could have been referring to any number of recent initiatives brewing in the Justice Department's policy cauldron these days, he was specifically talking about the Joint Operation Command Center of the Synchronized Operations Command Complex (SOCC). SOCC is slated to employ hundreds of cameras spread about the nation's capital while "50 officials monitor a wall of 40 video screens showing images of travelers, drivers, residents and pedestrians."

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