This is topic Need some TIPS? in forum The Flameboard at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
Meet the STASI mark II.

The land of the free, huh?
The home of the brave, eh?

It occurs to me that there is *very* little difference in the methods of operation between the former USSR / DDR and our own much beloved Free World(tm)... in fact, the only significant distinction is that one side has collapsed and the other hasn't (yet).
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
That is NOT a good sign...
 

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Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Yes but George W. Bush is a Republican so obviously this is not his actions at all 'cuz he's cute and fuzzy and huggable.
 

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Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
Oh, well that's a brilliant idea isn't it?
Perhaps someone should send them a book about the NKVD or Stazi or KGB or Gestapo or anyone like that. Assuming anyone stupid enough to propose that can read.
 

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Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
 
Wow. Its like Nightwatch, but in real life.
Who called it?
U.S. Martial Law

Wow.....and its going to be run by FEMA. X-Files fans as well as B5 fans might recognise the irony in this new development
 

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Posted by Ultra Magnus Pym (Member # 239) on :
 
Walton Simons is pleased, no doubt.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I'll really start to get worried when the Homeland Security people start talking about trying to identify the terrorists so that we can embrace them and bring them back into the fold of society...

The sad thing is that even though "Babylon 5" and other shows have done this kind of plot line, it's really NOT that original... thanks to our wonderful fascist/communist friends.

Jeez. Now we can start comparing fascists, communists, and capitalists all in the same category!
 

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Posted by Red BWC (Member # 818) on :
 
Department of Homelan Security
 

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Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
Yes! I'm going to go report my commie atheist neighbors right now!!!
 

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Posted by Ultra Magnus Pym (Member # 239) on :
 

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Originally posted by First of Two:

I dunno, would you rather the letter carrier ignore it when he notices that Jake's pickup is full of wayyy too much fertilizer and gasoline cans? Or that Jimbo's ordered 350 pounds of rat poison?

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Or that Jimbo's ordered 350 pounds of rat poison?

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Surely even Wing Commander IV was dramatic gold compared to Wing Commander the film?

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We can't find that page,
but here are some tools to find it

SEARCH THE SITE

You can search the previous seven editions of The Washington Times Online for free. For an advanced search with more options, click here.

We post about one-third of the original content from the daily print edition on our Web site. Please search our Long-Term Archives if you can't find what you're looking for. Searching and viewing the article summaries are free, and you can retrieve the full articles for a modest fee.

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I don't know what the article said, but TIPS is now real.

First we get kids rteporting on their parentsd with the DARE program, now every USA citizen can report his neighbor through the web site:

http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html

I leave you with the words of Ben Franklin:

"They taht can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temorary safty, deserve neither liberty nor safty."


 

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Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
^ Kosh, TIPS got show down in the planning stages.
 

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Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
 
I'll take that to mean shot down, which is good.

Here's the next attempt at a Police State.

President Bush ( news - web sites) has called on Congress to thoroughly review the law that bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the Reconstruction-era law, known as the "Posse Comitatus Act."

Ridge said Sunday that it "goes against our instincts as a country to empower the military with the ability to arrest," and called the prospect "very unlikely."

But he said the government is wise to examine the law.

"We need to be talking about military assets, in anticipation of a crisis event," Ridge said on "Fox News Sunday." "And clearly, if you're talking about using the military, then you should have a discussion about posse comitatus."

Two influential Democratic senators agreed with Bush and Ridge that the law ought to be reviewed, but expressed no interest in granting the military new powers to arrest American citizens.

Sen. Carl Levin ( news, bio, voting record), chairman Senate Armed Services Committee ( news - web sites), said posse comitatus "has served us well for a long time."

"It's kept the military out of law enforcement, out of arresting people except in the most unusual emergency situations like a riot or after some kind of a disaster where they have to protect against looting," Levin, D-Mich., said on CNN's "Late Edition."

However, he said: "I don't fear looking at it to see whether or not our military can be more helpful in a very supportive and assisting role even than they have been up to now — providing equipment, providing training, those kind of things which do not involve arresting people."

Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he favors expanding the military's role in responding to major catastrophes such as an attack by a weapon of mass destruction.

The law "has to be amended, but we're not talking about general police power," Biden, D-Del., said on "Fox News Sunday."

Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, who heads the new military command charged with defending American territory, told The New York Times he favors changing the law to grant greater domestic powers to the military to protect against terror attacks. He offered no specific changes he favored.

Congress is racing to approve legislation by the end of its session this fall that would make Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security a reality.

In the Senate, a version of the measure by Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., tracks closely with Bush's plan. It also would augment the agency's ability to gather and analyze intelligence from the FBI ( news - web sites), CIA ( news - web sites) and others.

That bill is to be considered by the Senate committee Wednesday.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey said on NBC's "Meet the Press" there was a strong possibility Congress will resolve its differences and send Bush a bill enacting the sweeping government reorganization by Sept. 11.

Some lawmakers have expressed concern about rushing decisions on far-reaching changes in the bureaucracy, but Armey said: "It's time to move forward with this. The president's got a good plan."

Bush planned to give a speech Monday about his proposed new department and view demonstrations of high-technology devices for combatting terrorism that are being developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
The real question we should be asking is why Fox News broadcasts on a Sunday. I mean, shouldn't their entire broadcast crew be, uh, "resting?"
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
No judgements on my part here, but some wild theorizing: In a world (Pretend I'm the voiceover guy) where war has been recast as policework, and policework as war, does it not behoove every state to become a police state?

At the risk of offending Francis Fukiyama, it seems to me that what we used to consider the bedrock of the political spectrum is turning into clay, and the old rules (Liberal/Conservative, Right/Left, Peace/War) are about to go out of style.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Tom: I think you're thinking of CBS.
 

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Posted by Red Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Okaaaay ... nevermind ...

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Justice Dept Forging Ahead
With Operation TIPS
By Karen Branch-Brioso
St Louis Post-Dispatch
Washington Bureau
7-22-2

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is forging ahead with establishing a network of domestic tipsters - despite being dealt what may be a deathly blow to the plan: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, inserted last week a ban on the program in the bill to form a new Homeland Security Department.

"The administration is continuing to pursue Operation TIPS. We're continuing with that course of action," Barbara Comstock, spokeswoman for Attorney General John Ashcroft, said in an interview Friday. That was the same day Armey's committee approved the bill. "We believe the program represents an important resource and that it's been misrepresented to date."

Operation TIPS, short for Terrorism Information and Prevention System, is one part of President George W. Bush's volunteerism initiatives. It aims to recruit millions of American workers to be alert to "suspicious" activities they encounter in their workday routines - and report them to a toll-free, federal hot line. The government is looking for "truck drivers, bus drivers, train conductors, mail carriers, utility meter readers, ship captains and port personnel," according to the program's Web site. Armey's impetus for banning Operation TIPS? "To ensure that no operation of the department can be construed to promote citizens spying on one another," he wrote in his summary of the bill. The Republican leader's opposition was the politically weightiest in a weeklong series of statements against the program, set for launch in August.

The American Civil Liberties Union declared last Monday that the program could turn utility workers into "government-sanctioned peeping Toms." Then on Wednesday the Rutherford Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes privacy and religious rights, weighed in.

"What this means for the average citizen is that whatever you read, eat or do -- in the privacy of your home or out in public - will now be suspect in the eyes of your cable repairman, postal carrier, meter man or others who, by way of the services they provide, will have access to your home," said John W. Whitehead, founder and president of the Virginia-based institute.

The outcry prompted the U.S. Postal Service to issue a statement Wednesday to make it clear that its 300,000-plus letter carriers nationwide hadn't signed on.

But Sue Brennan, spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said in an interview Friday that the idea was still on the table. She said Postal Service officials and the unions representing its letter carriers plan to meet with Justice Department officials to further explore the program. The notice of nonparticipation, she said, was to make it clear that an earlier meeting did not signal an endorsement.

"We issued it to try to calm what was going on," she said. "We never agreed to participate. Nothing had progressed beyond that first meeting."

Yet the plan has plenty of takers already. Labor unions that represent the nation's truck drivers and port workers stepped up to volunteer their "eyes and ears" to the terrorism surveillance effort.

Indeed, James P. Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, stood in the White House driveway June 21 after a meeting with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to pledge his support.

"On behalf of the Teamsters, I offered the fact that we have 500,000 truck drivers on the road at any one time, and these people can be the eyes and ears of the Homeland Security office," Hoffa said. "They are in secure buildings. We have 250,000 UPS workers. And we're going to work with the director in the future about trying to put together a program where they can report as they see things that are suspicious."

Teamsters spokesman Rob Black told the Post-Dispatch that the union has held "informal talks" with the administration since then.

"The Teamsters remain willing to make good on Mr. Hoffa's offer to help serve in the homeland security efforts, and the TIPS program is something that the Teamsters clearly support," Black said.

Similarly, the president of the 85,000-member International Longshoremen's Association stands by his vow in late March to play a surveillance role at the nation's docks.

"In the wake of September 11th, U.S. ports are again the focus of concern for illegal use of containers," Longshoreman's President John Bowers wrote in the summer newsletter to union members. "The contents could contain something much more destructive than illegal drugs, perhaps even a nuclear device.

"My members know the docks. They would know better than anyone if something's wrong."

The ACLU is acknowledging that, in such instances, a volunteer tipster program would be perfectly legitimate. But the group's primary concern revolves around the administration's stated purpose of recruiting from the ranks of utility meter readers and package delivery personnel.

"I'm less worried about interstate truckers as UPS delivery people who go to people's homes. Americans still feel like their home is a sacred place, where they should be free from unreasonable government surveillance," said ACLU legislative counsel Rachel King. She believes overzealous volunteers might consider as suspicious items they spot in a home - such as gun magazines, a Quran or letters written in Arabic.

"That doesn't mean if you're a UPS worker and you see a bomb that we don't want you to report it. We're not saying, 'Don't use common sense.' We're just saying that at what point do we create an informant society?"

Comstock, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said Operation TIPS' planners have no intention of promoting snooping in private places:

"None of the Operation TIPS materials published on the Web or elsewhere have made reference to entry or access to the homes of individuals; nor has it ever been the intention of the Department of Justice, or any other agency, to set up such a program. Our interest in establishing the Operation TIPS program is to allow American workers to share information they receive in the regular course of their jobs in public places and areas."

According to the program's Web site, Operation TIPS' launch will start this summer "as a pilot program in 10 cities." But on Friday, when asked whether the Justice Department had chosen those 10 cities, Comstock said the pilot plan had been scrapped for a less-targeted approach.

The ACLU, which was particularly concerned with the focus of a large corps of volunteer tipsters in just 10 U.S. cities, welcomed the change of plans. King speculated that opposition from multiple prongs of the political spectrum - and particularly from Armey - may have tempered the initial plan.

"It sounds like maybe the Justice Department is trying to take into consideration some of the concerns," King said. "If that's the case, I'm happy to hear that."

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WASHINGTON � Many religious conservatives who were most instrumental in pressing President Bush to appoint John Ashcroft as attorney general now say they have become deeply troubled by his actions as the leading public figure in the law enforcement drive against terrorism.

Their dismay comes as several Bush advisers have begun complaining that Mr. Ashcroft, with his lifelong politician's fondness for attention, has projected himself too often and too forcefully. More significantly, they say privately that he seems to be overstating the evidence of terrorist threats.

Most striking, however, is how some conservatives who were Mr. Ashcroft's biggest promoters for his cabinet appointment after he lost his re-election to the Senate in 2000 have lost enthusiasm. They cite his anti-terrorist positions as enhancing the kind of government power that they instinctively oppose.

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