Bush's List of Adrian Messenger Swat Team
http://www.smh.com.au/ Sydney Morning Herald July
>15, 2002
>
>US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies
>
>By Ritt Goldstein
>
>The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens
>as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.
>
>The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will
>have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany
>through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum
>of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
>
>Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage earlier
>this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, large-scale
>investigations of US citizens. As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being
>pursued as part of the so-called war against terrorism. It is a Department
>of Justice project.
>
>Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are
>being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to
>homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees,
>truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted
>recruits.
>
>A pilot program, described on the government Web site www.citizencorps.gov,
>is scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants
>participating in the first stage. Assuming the program is initiated in the
>10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million informants for a total
>population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 people.
>
>Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic
>states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on
>Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some
>informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having
>fabricated their reports. Present Justice Department procedures mean that
>informant reports will enter databases for future reference and/or action.
>The information will then be broadly available within the department,
>related agencies and local police forces. The targeted individual will
>remain unaware of the existence of the report and of its contents.
>
>The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to be searched without
>that person being informed that a search was ever performed, or of any
>surveillance devices that were implanted.
>
>At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-ordinated by the
>Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was given sweeping new powers,
>including internment, as part of the Reagan Administration's national
>security initiatives. Many key figures of the Reagan era are part of the
>Bush Administration. The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in
>secret, was another Reagan national security initiative.
>
>Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the
>movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden
>since 1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of
>life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts.
>His application has been supported by the European Parliament, five of
>Sweden's seven big political parties, clergy, and Amnesty and other rights
>groups.
