The Shrub is hoping to have 1 in 24 Americans spying on each others’ everyday lives in the name of fighting terrorism.

Why should we all become volunteer spies and hand over what little freedoms we have left by cashing in our friends’ and neighbors’ rights to privacy? What if there’s no TIPS program at all? (But what if there is! — Aha! Fear! The ultimate controller of the masses rears its ugly head yet again.)

This is most likely just an attempt to fragment the public by making us all paranoid of each other. Don’t fall for it friends.

If memory serves me correctly, to date, the Bush Administration hasn’t been too great about telling us much of anything.

See the story by Ritt Goldstein for The Sydney Morning Herald:
US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies.

The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.

The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report “suspicious activity”.