- An army of volunteers is lining up behind President George
W Bush in his attempt to build an American "home guard" against
terror, ignoring the protests of civil liberties groups who have criticised
the plan as granting the state a licence to snoop.
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- Postal workers, doormen, television company "cable
guys", delivery truck drivers and local shopkeepers are being recruited
to become the "eyes and ears" of American domestic security -
and they are showing overwhelming enthusiasm for the scheme, called Operation
Tips (Terrorism Information and Prevention System).
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- Tips starts next month as Justice Department officials
begin recruiting a million Americans for the initial pilot programme in
the country's 10 largest cities.
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- The Justice Department has said that it wants to recruit
workers whose "routines are ideally suited to help in the anti-terrorism
effort because they allow them to recognise unusual events".
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- A national telephone hotline and a network of intelligence
"reporting centres" are being set up for the scheme.
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- Officials are currently on their way to the 10 target
cities to set up training centres. Recruits will be given lectures on what
to look for and how to report suspicious persons, activities and objects.
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- Each delivery vehicle on an Operation Tips fleet will
be issued a bumper sticker advertising a free phone number to encourage
other members of the public to join in.
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- The plan has divided America, drawing fierce criticism
from liberals and civil liberties movements.
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- Opponents have calculated that Operation Tips will create
one "spy" for every 24 citizens, a ratio that critics point out
is higher than that of the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany.
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- Many liberal commentators have drawn parallels with the
climate of fear and suspicion during the McCarthy purges of suspected Communists
and Soviet sympathisers in the 1950s.
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- Dennis Kucinich, a leading Ohio Democrat on the Congressional
National Security Oversight Committee, denounced the scheme, arguing that
it would transform America from "an information society to an informant
society".
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- The president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
Nadine Strossen, said that President Bush was "fearmongering".
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- John Mason, a professor of political science at William
Paterson University in New Jersey, said: "It is not going to do anything
useful, and it is about maintaining a climate of fear, a sort of mobilisation
for war. It has a lot to do with politics and it gives the general public
a way of participating in a war without a visible enemy. But it will end
up wasting everyone's time."
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- On the streets of New York, however, reaction has been
overwhelmingly positive. "I think the critics are making a big mistake.
I would be happy to do some spying. I would love to do something to help
America," said Wilma Silva, a postwoman, as she drove her delivery
van down Broadway.
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- A few blocks down the street, Douglas Hannah was delivering
Coca-Cola to a local grocery store, a job that for 10 years has taken him
in and out of the sort of corner stores often owned by the immigrants targeted
in the anti-Islamic backlash that followed the Twin Towers attack.
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- "Yes, I sure would join this operation," he
said. "I would be very happy to keep an eye on suspicious activities
and suspicious people, and I would not feel uncomfortable about it at all."
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- In a Federal Express delivery van around the corner on
Bleecker Street, Arpad Dozzy, an American-born son of Hungarian immigrants
who had fled communism, put it simply.
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- "We need to do this," he said. "We need
to watch for them, watch for anything out of the ordinary. And you know
what? If you have done nothing wrong, you don't have to worry about being
spied on."
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/
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