IP: Chafets: U.S. should not be a nation of spies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:56:47 -0400 (EDT)
To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
Subject: Chafets: U.S. should not be a nation of spies

> From the New York Daily News --
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/3474p-3127c.html

U.S. should not be a nation of spies
by Zev Chafets

U.S. should not be a nation of spies



President Bush introduced a comprehensive plan for homeland security
yesterday. The document runs 90 pages, but you only need to read one
sentence to know what's wrong with it.
"Terrorism is not so much a system of belief, like fascism or communism,
it is a strategy and a tactic, a means of attack."

This is intellectually crooked.

On Sept. 11, America was not attacked by some disembodied strategy. It was
hit by Arab kamikazes, soldiers in the Islamist jihad against Western
civilization. Defining this enemy as "a means of attack" is like saying
that, after Pearl Harbor, the United States was at war with aerial combat.

There are sensible ideas in the President's homeland security plan. It
calls for creating a much-needed national identity card (disguised as a
national driver's license), stockpiling vaccines, increasing the FBI's
analytical capacity, improving governmental coordination and upgrading
computer security.

But this raises an obvious question: Whom is the government supposed to be
identifying, analyzing and coordinating against? If the answer is anybody
with a grudge and some explosives, then putting broad security powers in
the hands of the government is less than worthless; it is reckless.

An example is a new Justice Department program called the Terrorism
Information and Prevention System, or TIPS. Its intent is to mobilize
"millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship
captains, utility employees and others" to report on suspicious people
they encounter in the course of their daily rounds.

The project, which begins in August in 10 cities, is being portrayed by
the Justice Department as a glorified version of Crime Stoppers.
"Everywhere in America, a concerned worker can call a toll-free number and
be connected directly to a hotline routing calls to the proper law
enforcement agency."

There is no reason to suppose that TIPS, despite its Soviet-sounding
appeal to concerned workers, has an evil intent. Its goal is not to turn
the East Side into East Germany. But it is, nonetheless, a recipe for
disaster.

TIPS wants citizens to report suspicious behavior. But it won't - for
reasons of political correctness - tell them whom they should be
suspicious of. Without such specificity, the program becomes a government
mandate for letter carriers, school teachers, meter readers, trash
collectors and countless others to spy on, and turn in, their neighbors.

The results are apparent at the airport, where screeners must pretend that
a little old lady from Peoria arouses as much suspicion as a 25-year-old
Saudi man. Once TIPS gets going, people can drop a dime on anyone -
farmers with barrels of fertilizer in their trucks, stock boys with box
cutters, the loud neighbor next door. Who is to say they don't merit
investigation?

There are enemy agents in this country, and they are dangerous. But until
the government is prepared to say out loud who the actual enemy is,
Washington has no business asking the public for vigilance. That's a
prescription for a witch hunt. After all, if nobody in particular is the
threat, then everyone is.

E-mail: zchafets () aol com

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                          John F. McMullen
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