July 9, 2004: Headlines: USA Freedom Corps: TIPS Program: Daytona Beach News-Journal: USA Freedom Corps has an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Peace Corps Library: Tips Program: July 9, 2004: Headlines: USA Freedom Corps: TIPS Program: Daytona Beach News-Journal: USA Freedom Corps has an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-141-157-22-73.balt.east.verizon.net - 141.157.22.73) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 9:56 pm: Edit Post

USA Freedom Corps has an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

USA Freedom Corps has an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

USA Freedom Corps has an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

Homeland snoops

Hot-wiring the nation into snarls of suspicion

Last update: 09 July 2004

When President Bush announced its creation in his 2002 State of the Union address, "USA Freedom Corps" sounded like a program out of John Kennedy's playbook -- a Peace Corps for the "homeland": "My call," Bush said at the time, "is for every American to commit at least two years -- 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime -- to the service of your neighbors and your nation. . . . responding in case of crisis at home; rebuilding our communities; and extending American compassion throughout the world." More specifically, the president was calling for "volunteers to help police and fire departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger."

Those 15 words have stamped USA Freedom Corps with an imprint less like John Kennedy's and more like John Ashcroft's. Idealism has deferred to policing.

Two months after the State of the Union, Ashcroft, the attorney general, approved a $1.9 million grant to double Neighborhood Watch programs across the nation to 15,000, and to train Neighborhood Watch participants to spot and report "potential terrorist activity." The grant got little attention, Neighborhood Watch programs being an unthreatening, and generally welcome, part of the landscape.

The administration, however, created a different kind of Neighborhood Watch -- the kind that snoops into your living room and reports what's there to the government. It was called the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS). Thousands of mail carriers, utility workers and other people with regular access to (and into) people's homes would be trained to spot suspicious activities or possessions in people's homes. They'd report their findings to a government hotline. The intrusion was too much even for Republican members of Congress, who killed TIPS.

Undaunted, the administration is finding other ways to co-opt volunteer, civilian groups to its uses. The Highway Watch program is a nonprofit creation of the American Trucking Association. The program has been around since 1998. Truckers report emergency conditions such as debris on roadways, accidents or severe weather to law enforcement. This year and next, the Department of Homeland Security is paying the trucking association $41.3 million to recruit 10,000 truckers into an army of terrorist hunters. They're being trained to spot suspicious drivers, suspicious people in parking lots, suspicious contents in vehicles, and report their findings through a secret toll-free number. By next year, the Department of Homeland Security wants 400,000 such "sleuths" in its little army, including tollbooth workers, rest stop workers and construction crews. The Department of Homeland Security is also organizing Port Watch, River Watch and Transit Watch.

The paranoia is bad enough. The potential for abuse, for profiling, for overzealousness, for vigilantism and for hot-wiring the nation's public spaces and private citizens into snarls of suspicion, should make you stop and think: Is it all so necessary? Is it compatible with the nation's principles? The Department of Homeland Security gets 200 calls a month from its snoops, only 10 of which are related to suspected terrorism, and -- so far -- none of which has panned out as cases of terrorism in the making.

There is no assumption of privacy in public spaces. But in a free society, there is an assumption of freedom from being spied on even in public spaces, whether by police or by amateurs. Networks of snooping citizens are the specialty of totalitarian societies. They should be anathema to freedom-loving ones. Especially when the government could be spending tax dollars on less chancy, more urgent homeland security concerns, beginning with the intelligence services' still-decrepit computer systems.




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Story Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; USA Freedom Corps; TIPS Program

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