"Spies like us", 25 July 2002, Ottawa Xpress
Alan Martin

(On Friday, July 26, days after the Ottawa X Press went to press, the U.S> Congress rebuked the TIPS program, and it was removed from the U.S> Homeland Security bill that passed late Friday evening. The proposed training of millions of civilians spies is cancelled, for now.)

If you haven't yet had reason to fear the silver-spooned, one-trick pony that is George W. Bush, fear not - his latest "anti-terror" initiative might help you along. In the most recent attempt to route out the terrorists under every bed, Bush launched the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) last week. Under the plan, more than 11 million Americans (or four per cent of the population) are to be recruited as domestic spies and informants to report "suspicious activity." A pilot program starts next month in the 10 largest cities.

Volunteers are being sought from workers who, according to the Justice Department's Citizen Corps web site, are "well positioned to recognize unusual events and . . . to report suspicious activity." These include truck drivers, postal staff, train conductors, shipmasters and utility repairmen. They will be given training and unspecified "materials" to report suspicious people to the nearest FBI field office.

Civil liberties groups are understandably alarmed.

For starters, the huge informal surveillance network will mean the U.S. will have a percentage of civilian informants similar to that employed by the East German Stasi police at the height of the Cold War.

Rachel King, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "The administration apparently wants to implement a program that will turn local cable or gas or electrical technicians into government-sanctioned Peeping Toms." Her group is concerned that these volunteers would, in effect, be searching people's homes without warrants, that resources would be wasted on a flood of useless tips, and that the program would encourage vigilantism and racial profiling.

I fear worse. Not only does this measure put the U.S. firmly on the slippery slope to totalitarianism (not a word to use lightly), it has the potential to be far more insidious and destructive a force than McCarthyism ever was.

One need look no further than East Germany to see how such a system tore the country's social fabric as friends and family members ratted each other out. Katarina Witt, the former skater, Olympic Gold medallist, and Playboy pin-up, lost a court decision to prevent the disclosure of her Stasi file. Among other things it revealed she had given information to security authorities in return for perks such as a car, a better apartment, and unlimited foreign travel.

In the United States, the witch hunt for "Communists" during the McCarthy era equally ruined careers and destroyed relationships. Even Albert Einstein was subjected to FBI abuse after J. Edgar Hoover targeted him. The physicist, of course, was not involved in any criminal activity other than to be a committed social activist, anti-racist, anti-war critic, whose daring extended beyond mathematics.

The CBC program Ideas recently aired a broadcast that discussed the psychology behind the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, behind McCarthyism in the U.S., and behind the false recovery of childhood memories of sexual abuse.

All three phenomena caused immense damage because authorities needed to create a larger than life threat in order to justify their agendas. The ensuing campaigns eventually took on a life of their own. As the net grew wider, and as the indictments grew, so did the appetite for more names.

In Germany one town was left without any women after torture ensured the "complicity" of all. In the U.S., a person accused of being a Communist would furnish the FBI with lists of other "fellow travellers," thinking this betrayal would perhaps take him out of the line of fire. With the urging of their psychologists, "victims" of sexual abuse would accuse their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, whoever, of diddling them. And public sympathy for the accused was nil, because, hey, black magic, Communism and pedophilia are wrong. Right?

Even without TIPS, there are early signs that the U.S. is edging close to the abyss. Nearly 12,000 suspected terrorists are already being held without trial, according to the International Action Center, a New York-based organization founded by former U.S. attorney general Ramsay Clark. The majority of these people are being kept incognito, with no access to legal representation. No prizes for guessing their ethnicity.

Last week John Walker Lindh (aka Johnny Taliban) copped to being a member of al-Qaeda and was sent to jail for 20 years. Know how they got him to confess? After finding him wounded in Afghanistan, U.S. Marines duct taped him to a stretcher and left him to stew in a hot, dark metal container for 72 hours. Torture? Ha, perfectly acceptable jurisprudence under the circumstances. You gotta problem with that? You must be Taliban, too.

What disturbs me about TIPS is the lack of accountability. There are no guarantees, for example, that some dumb ass in the American heartland wouldn't use the guise of patriotism to turn in neighbourhood blacks he feels are lowering property values. I know there is a continued threat to the U.S. from Islamic fundamentalists - Sept. 11 is memory enough - but there is no need for such a program. People with information about illegality should know their civic duty regardless of Sept. 11, and report what they know to authorities.

This is not like your friendly neighbourhood watch. It is a completely different animal, and its societal repercussions are obviously lost on Bush.