David Osborne
I'm typing this in the heat of one of those Southern Illinois muggy nights when the air conditioner struggles just to knock the humidity out of the air, let alone cool the house. It's in part the hot muggy weather that led to the odd scene at the dinner table tonight: my daughter was unhappy because her brother was "looking at her plate and laughing." Don't ask; I don't pretend to understand.
There's no tattling allowed in my house, so that means my daughter voices her displeasure directly and loudly to the source. It serves the same purpose; an adult is sure to intervene to at least quell the whining noise.
My kids have a distinct tendency to mind other people's business, so the "no tattling" rule is mostly aimed at getting them to be responsible for themselves first. Besides, I would be inundated with reports of insignificant or imagined offenses.
The government is trying to encourage tattling as part of its war on terrorism and homeland security efforts. Operation TIPS will set up a central reporting system for such workers as cable installers, phone and utility technicians to report suspicious, potentially terrorist activity.
It sounds like a good idea; the pilot program calls for a million sets of eyes in ten cities next month. It may sound like a good idea on paper, but it's a potential disaster in practice.
The Justice Department's TIPS program will have potentially millions of eyes out there prowling our neighborhoods looking for "unusual or suspicious activity." Sounds good, but what does that mean? The 9/11 hijackers attended flight school, a hardly suspicious activity. About 300 students attended flight school right here at SIUC in 2001.
On the other hand, not long ago, a TV news reporter filmed the purchase of a length of pipe from a local hardware store and called it, "the first step in making a pipe bomb." Under that rationale, any hobbyist with a garage full of half-finished electrical projects, any do-it-yourselfer with a bin of cutoff pipe remnants, is likely to be an entry in the TIPS database.
The American Civil Liberties Union, among others, opposes the idea based on privacy concerns. I don't agree often with the ACLU, but in this case I'm with them all the way. Now, to be fair, the idea of the government's program is that the reports are based on what they see in public areas. The concept is these people spend a lot of time in the same area and neighborhoods and are likely to notice things that suddenly appear out of place. These people are not supposed to be spying on their fellow Americans.
Let's be realistic; that is exactly what this program will do, good intentions aside. Especially when the people the program is looking to recruit are the people who would potentially be entering our yards and homes for other, more legitimate reasons. It sure seems like a nifty way to get around that whole messy Fourth Amendment requirement for a search warrant.
And how much useful information is this program likely to yield? No doubt there will be a few useful nuggets among the tons of red herrings, but how much time and resources will have to go into weeding out the useful from the useless? What's the chance something significant will be missed as the Justice Department chases flocks of wild geese?
The whole country is on heightened awareness and alert since 9/11. The government frequently issues new warnings keeping the peril of terrorist activity in our forebrains. Isn't this enough? Do we really need an unofficial police force out there, one with little or no training, little or no restraint, monitoring us?
Published on 11/17/05; 12:24:44 PM
