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 allow them to recognize unusual events and have expressed a desire for a mechanism to report these events to authorities.
These workers will use their common sense and knowledge of their work environment to identify suspicious or unusual activity. This program offers a way for these workers to report what they see in public areas and along transportation routes.
All it will take to volunteer is a telephone or access to the Internet as tips can be reported on the toll-free hotline or online. Information received will be entered into the national database and referred electronically to a point of contact in each state as appropriate. This is not a national 911 center, and callers are expected to dial 911 for emergency local response.
Industries that are interested in participating in this program will be given printed guidance material, flyers and brochures, about the program and how to contact the Operation TIPS reporting center. This information can be distributed to workers or posted in common work areas. Operation TIPS is scheduled to be launched in late summer or early fall 2002. The goal of the program is to establish a reliable and comprehensive national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related, activity. By establishing one central reporting center, information from several different industries can be maintained in a single database. Operation TIPS will be phased in across the country to enable the system to build its capacity to receive an increasing volume of tips.
The above was taken from the Citizen Corp Website: http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html
What the citizen corps page does not mention is the scale of the program. It is reported that approximately one in twenty-four Americans will be asked to volunteer, and more can volunteer if they choose to do so.
At this point in the node, I lose any sense of objectivity and fly off the handle.
John Ashcroft is a grayfaced pig, with no respect whatsoever for the constitution, except for the second amendment. From what I have heard, the T.I.P.S. program will be greater in scale than anything East Germany ever had.
When I consider the frame of mind of a TIPs volunteer, what type of person they most likely are, I shudder. These are the people who will be supplying the FBI with information. The same FBI which can now search your home without ever having to tell you that they have done so. The same FBI that no longer needs a warrant for wire taps or email snooping. Etc.
The system is already in place. You can register as a T.I.P.S. informant online. In a week it will probably be in full swing, or completely destroyed. I hope for the latter, but I fear the former. At any rate, the only way to change it is to get active. Go to a protest, I know that if there isn’t one in my college town by the time I get back I’ll start one myself. Scream some rhetoric at people, if necessary. Get in a T.I.P.S. volunteer’s face. Call her/him a traitor to the ideals upon which this country was formed. Grab some T.I.P.S. registration cards and serve them a la ‘Nam draft cards. Be visible, be effective, and be resilient, and we just may be able to have the system removed.