US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

[OneFootInTheGrave]

It is not a fundamentally wrong idea, and if you see something being wrongly done, that is fine, but still good check should be kept in place so that you dont have some rough justice appearing out there.

Coupling that with the rights of surveillance of whomever you want, and searches without people knowing that they have been searched.

I mean endless doors to abuse appear in the middle level of those who keep us "secure".

At high levels there cannot be real accountablilty anyhow (only if they step on their colleagues feet). But this opens doors to some middle level guys to stir up fuss where there is none for utterly wrong reasons like wrong political bias (leftists and such), racial reasons - arabs and muslims in general I can bet will be more affected by those measures than others, or maybe even personal reasons, etc.

Accountability is the main factor in this whole thing, but with large numbers of people involved this can hardly be as well controlled as it should. Well I wouldn't expect USA to be secetrly leaned towards encouraging such action, but there will be plenty of opportunity to lesser folks to try and "educate" someone they think is a threat.


See no evil/ hear no evil is no good, but how effective and efficient in finding terrorists this such huge surveillance operation with God knows whom in the 1 million chosen ones will be is anyones guess. The potential for causing more harm than good to normal citizens and for wasting existing intelligence agency staff time and resources is immense. Not to mention a potential for another McCarthyist era.

Did you have such free espionage laws against the citizens in the 50's?

[Lefty Scaevola]

Increased survelliance by law enforcement and informers is not a problem for me, being one of the few real live got nothing to hide persons (I am even scrupulously honest with taxes). But if they leak any info to spammers or marketers, I will be infuriated. In my current situation, increased police survelance has only a plus side in the way of increased security, from all sorts of crime, not just terrorism. Yhe more eyeblass in my neighborhood, the less burglars, robbers, rapists, vandals, etc. I do not care at all that they make note about how grungy i dress at home, or how I scratch whatever itches or that I say, in sweet voice, terrible curses to my wife GD dog or somtimes laugh out loud at my children's social problems or see my necking with my wife in the back yard or see any of my many non-conformist habits. I am better than any of them anyway . For all you guilty scum who are trying to hide you misdeeds, MUA HA HA! suffer!

[DanS]

Lefty: If I didn't know any better, I'd guess you were an exhibitionist.

[Q Classic]

i dunno, this just reminds me a bit of whitehouse.org's patriot registration form...

if this is serious, i really don't know how such a thing could work; i'm setting aside considerations of civil liberSAFETY FOR ALL CITIZENS IS A PARAMOUNT CONCERN OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. NATURALLY, SOME COMPROMISES MUST BE MADE, BUT THAT IS IN THE TRADITION OF AMERICA. NO PATRIOT WOULD QUESTION THAT IN TIMES OF GREAT PERIL, CITIZENS MUST DO WHAT IS GOOD AND RIGHT FOR THE COUNTRY.ties...

4% of americans means tens of millions of reports filed, which then have to be duplicated in triplicate, xeroxed, faxed, digitized, classified and censored, etc., etc., etc... who's going to do all that ? and if the program is successful, increasing the number of people involved?
where's all the paper going to go? yucca mounDO NOT QUESTION THE WISDOM OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. TIPS IS TO ENSURE THE SAFETY AND FREEDOM FOR ALL RIGHT THINKING AMERICAN CITIZENStain?

i dunno, to me it just seems like another crackpot idea from the bush adminiPRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE BEST WARTIME LEADER AMERICA HAS EVER HAD. HE STANDS FOR MORALITY, RIGHT-THINKING, STRENGTH, AND GOOD LEADERSHIP. DO NOT QUESTION HIS AUTHORITY.stration.

ah, well. comes with living in times like "dangerous" these, mm? we wouldn't want those mean old nasty terrorists to win now, would we? maybe soon i'll get one of them patriot identification tatoos that whitehouse.org says is going to mandatory soon...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

[drake]

Now there were 15517 murders in 2000 alone, what is being done about that?

Criminals only get caught usually when people tip the police or FBI.

But wait, because someone opened their eyes and saw a criminal, they violated that poor persons civil rights. They shouldn't have looked at them because thats an invasion of privacy!

Maybe police tip lines ought to be turned off too?

[Lemmy]

police tip lines are used to solve commited crimes, not to report suspicious people, you just call your local police station then.
To report a man who has done specifically this, and not someone who you think could go and do this or that

[drake]

The idea is that normal people are always going to play a role in helping prevent crime and catch criminals. People say they don't want big brother watching them, but the truth is they don't want anyone watching them.

[Chris 62]

Well, at least we aern't as bad as Holland, i hear they fine you if you say certain things they don't like.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm just glad you all haven't figured out I'm spying on you .

[Shi Huangdi]

The constitution has not been suspended, civil liberties still apply and if they try to go too far the Supreme Court will stop them. This is little more then a Neighborhood Watch type program.

[drake]

Of course Shi...though some people like to label every government plan as a sign of the apocalypse.

[Chris 62]

Hey, I'll spy on you if the price is right!

Show me the money.

[drake]

Chris you take the Nursing Home, I'll take the playboy mansion

[Chris 62]

No thanks, no action there!

Better to spy on things that could get out of hand, like "Hooter's" for example, a hotbed of terrorism if ever there was one!