NP? worth reading today

[Tim Strzechowski]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0207180244jul18.story

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Postal Service has decided not to participate in a
government program touted as a tip service for authorities concerned with
terrorism, but which the ACLU has assailed as a scheme to cast Americans as
Peeping Toms.



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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/198/editorials/Ashcroft_vs_AmericansP.shtm
l
> Ashcroft vs. Americans
> By A Boston Globe Editorial, 7/17/2002
> OPERATION TIPS - the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - is a
> scheme that Joseph Stalin would have appreciated. Plans for its pilot
> phase, to start in August, have Operation TIPS recruiting a million letter
> carriers, meter readers, cable technicians, and other workers with access
> to private homes as informants to report to the Justice Department any
> activities they think suspicious.  This is not an updating of George
> Orwell's ''1984.'' It is not a satire on the paranoid fantasies of
> right-wing kooks who see black helicopters swooping across their big sky.
> It will be a nationwide program run by Attorney General John Ashcroft's
> Justice Department. If it is allowed to start up and gather steam, it will
> begin in 10 cities and then expand everywhere, enrolling millions of
> Americans to spy on their neighbors. [...]
>