Vineland echoes: commentary re TIPS

[Doug Millison]

''The rats are coming''
Printed on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 @ 00:03:11 EDT
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=495

 By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) - One of the current Administration's "anti-terror"
initiatives is slowly taking shape, and it isn't a pretty sight. TIPS,
Terrorism Information and Prevention System
(www.CitizenCorps.gov/tips.html)*, is a government plan for recruiting
millions of Americans to spy and snitch on their neighbors. The
recruitment focuses on people with access to homes and businesses,
including letter carriers and utility employees.

According to Ritt Goldstein, who broke the news, the Justice
Department plans that "the U.S. will have a higher percentage of
citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous
Stasi secret police." One in every 24 Americans will be a snitch,
which means that, assuming your acquaintance list is 150 names long,
you will know six rats personally.

This is an unprecedented level of government spying on citizens. But
such spying has a long pedigree, which helps to make the new
initiative seem almost innocuous. Bill Redden describes in his book
Snitch Culture, the frightening extent to which Americans are addicted
to snitching.

The scope of snitching goes way beyond direct governmental spy
operations such as COINTELPRO and Senator McCarthy's "Unamerican"
hearings. In public schools, students are invited to place anonymous
calls and rat on other students, while teachers and counselors are
encouraged to report "anti-social" tendencies to the police. At work,
employers require workers to report on other workers, hire detectives
to spy on workers and question neighbors on workers' private lives.
Neighbors are asked to call the police if they suspect someone's child
is crying too much. Hospital workers are asked to inform the police
about the drug habits of patients. The IRS wants to know what you
think of your neighbor's new Lexus, etc.

The media endorses the snitching culture with reality television shows
in which participants assess one another for the camera, or shows like
the Jerry Springer Show, in which guests are publicly humiliated by
revelations from relatives and old lovers. Crime shows invite the
public to report suspects they might know, and stories about relatives
or spouses ratting on each other to law enforcement agencies are given
prominent and sympathetic coverage in the news.

Snitches and informants are usually associated with authoritarian, and
often totalitarian, regimes. The infamous Stasi police in East Germany
has won notoriety for their extensive snitch files. Other brutal
regimes invest in large secret police forces that specialize in
recruiting and handling informants. The regimes of Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
and Israel all rely extensively on such methods.

The official explanation is always that informants are needed to
foresee and prevent security threats or violence. The justification
for TIPS is no different. But there is another aspect of snitching
that is equally important to the rulers, an aspect that George Orwell
explored in depth in his acclaimed novel, 1984.

Snitching creates a culture of paranoia. It isolates people, breaks
down social solidarity, and prevents exchange of information between
members of society. Everyone becomes obsessed with watching their own
back. Nobody is a friend. Nobody can be trusted.

Snitching creates a culture in which every encounter between two
citizens is mediated by authority: Big Brother is always in the room
with you. And even if it isn't, you have to behave as if it is. The
ubiquity of authority is the essence of totalitarianism.

Many people, after reading the official Citizen Corps web page, will
say that TIPS is really no big deal. After all, what can be so wrong
about citizens notifying the government about what looks to them as
terrorist related activity?

A lot, actually. People don't know what terror activity looks like. To
the casual eye, preparing for a terror attack can look like just about
anything. Professional terrorists don't look like professional
terrorists. They look like me and you. Informants will report instead
on whatever fits their prejudices - odd haircuts, books in Arabic,
posters of Che Guevara, disparaging comments about the intelligence of
the President, etc. Some of them will invent stories to harm people
because they hold a grudge against them. Others will use their
imagination to make themselves loved by their handlers.

TIPS will create new governmental files on citizens, useful for
harassment and abuse, and not much else. It will increase the paranoia
and suspiciousness of American society, driving it one step closer to
George Orwell's dystopia. That is a high price to pay for pretending
to increase our safety. It is a suicidal response to the terrorist
suicide attack on September 11.

If TIPS doesn't seem outrageous, it is because Americans have already
accepted a significant degree of totalitarianism and the decline of
civil society that is totalitarianism's essential counterpart. The
breakdown of sociability and the "crisis of trust" is one of the few
things the left and the right in America agree upon**. The culture of
snitching is both a symptom and a precipitant of this crisis.

During the last election campaign George W. Bush told us he found
Jesus. If TIPS is any evidence, perhaps he found Judas, and, being
under the influence, mistook him for Jesus.

(Rats disclaimer: the last sentence, and all other explicit and
implied criticism of the government of the United States, were made in
jest only. The author is actually a great admirer and fervent
supporter of our great president and most pious leader, George W.
Bush, hammer of terrorists and slayer of evil states. God bless him.)

* On July 16, 2002, after information on TIPS began attracting media
attention, the content of the page changed. In particular, information
relevant to calculating the size of TIPS was excised. This column as
well as Goldstein's refer therefore to information that is no longer
public. The old page will remain viewable for a while in the google
cache.

** see Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community, and Francis Fukuyama's Trust: The Social Virtues
and the Creation of Prosperity.

[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an
unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen is
sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not. Gabriel lives
in the United States.]

Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: gash at YellowTimes.org

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