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Anti-Empire
The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
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EUROPE: PREPARE FOR HUGE INFLUX OF US POLITICAL REFUGEES national |
miscellaneous |
news report
 Monday July 15, 2002 21:56 by last days of the american republic
 The Bush regime will use citizens to spy on other citizens, generating a huge wave of political refugees from repression. See the official regime website at http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html and the article by Ritt Goldstein 'US Planning to Recruit One in 24 Americans as Citizen Spies' by Ritt Goldstein at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0714-06.htm The Bush regime will use citizens to spy on other citizens, generating a huge wave of political refugees from repression. See the official regime website at http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html and the article by Ritt Goldstein 'US Planning to Recruit One in 24 Americans as Citizen Spies' by Ritt Goldstein at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0714-06.htm
THE JUSTICE Department is not saying much about the Terrorism Information and Prevention System -- otherwise known as Operation TIPS -- which is due to begin as a pilot program later this summer. Apparently the only public information about the program, in fact, is on a government Web site, which describes it as "a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity." Operation TIPS will, in the pilot stage, involve a million workers, who, "in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement." It will offer them "training . . . in how to look out for suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity." It will also provide "a formal way to report" that activity "through a single and coordinated toll-free number." This description, which is essentially all we know about the program, poses more questions than it answers. Public vigilance is a good thing, and so is encouraging citizens to alert authorities to terrorist activity. It makes sense to educate people who work at potential targets or at places where lethal cargo may be smuggled. But having the government recruit informants among letter carriers and utility workers -- people who enter the homes of Americans for reasons unrelated to law enforcement -- is an entirely different matter. Americans should not be subjecting themselves to law enforcement scrutiny merely by having cable lines installed, mail delivered or meters read. Police cannot routinely enter people's houses without either permission or a warrant. They should not be using utility workers to conduct surveillance they could not lawfully conduct themselves. From the sketchy descriptions of the program so far, it is impossible to determine with any precision what the government is intending. Is TIPS to be principally focused on cargo shipping or on people in their homes? What sort of home activities will the government be urging workers to report to authorities? And what incentives, if any, will be used to encourage volunteers? Nor is it clear whether the program will be effective. It is easy to imagine how such a program might produce little or no useful information but would flood law enforcement with endless suspicions that would divert authorities from more promising investigative avenues. A White House official told us that the program will be focused more on suspicious activities around neighborhoods than inside homes. And a Justice Department spokeswoman says that the program is still "in its early planning stages." The administration owes a fuller explanation before launch day. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63924-2002Jul12.html |
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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 3 2 1There are to be 11 million citizens used to spy on their friends, co-workers and family. The US is getting more like Big Brother every day...
The numbers clearly indicate that if the pilot programme is enacted as planned ie. 1 million recruited from 10 cities, as long as both people and cities are real in the conventional sense, then the best case scenario is approximately 1 spy for every 24 inhabitants. You could probably spread this number a bit wider if you take hinterlands into consideration, which is reasonable, so even if you say 1 in 40 is a spy, the numbers are quite disturbing.
ya this guy has all the answers, a math whiz like this has to be right.
check out this paragraph:
"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."
problems with the argument
1. PILOT program, no indication of what relation the pilot would have to any final general program, particularly as regards numbers.
2. "ASSUMING"- there's you biggest problem right there. what is he basing his assumptions on? if on nothing then who cares what conclusions he draws from them?
what if we assume the program is initiated in the 10 smallest cities in the country, maybe that will work out to 6 or 7 spies per citizen, maybe a different one for each day of the week?
3. Since this is a PILOT program the ridiculous assumption is not even generalizable. suppose the pilot program involved seven citizens spying on each one of the people in the test cities, obvously you would have some big problems expanding that to the entire population, you might conceivably work out some kind of rotation where person A spies on erson B on monday whilst person B is spying on person C and so forth and then switch it around on tuesday so person B is spying on person A who is spying on person C, but what would be the point of that? My assumption of the ten smallest cities is every bit as well supported as the assumption of the 10 largest cities, so if they can run a headline that 1 in every 24 americans is going to be a spy, i could equally well run a headline that every american is going to be spying on 6 or 7 of his closest friends.
4. in regards to the supposed hoards of refugees- immigration to the US only SLOWED DOWN during the Civil War which was the test bed for WWI. There has not been any kind of significant or sustained outflow of people from the United States since it existed, although the indians probably would have left if given the opportunity. but if people didnt stay away during the civil war, i dont think they are going to stay away because the milk man is looking twice at the strange car parked by the side of the road.