Posted on: Thursday, July 18, 2002

EDITORIAL
Domestic spy network would be going too far

Not much is known about the Justice Department's Terrorism Information and Prevention System — Operation TIPS — except that it is envisioned as a pilot program set to begin later this summer.

The Washington Post says all it has been able to learn about the program was on a government Web site that describes it as "a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity."

We agree with the Post: This program poses more questions than answers.

We already have a system of public vigilance, of course. Citizens have long been encouraged to call 911 to report unlawful activity.But this program seems to reach much further, involving recruitment and training of a network of informants, many of whom get paid to enter the homes of Americans as part of their "day" jobs.

Certainly more must be done to safeguard the nation against the ongoing threat of new terrorist attacks. But setting up a network of domestic spies sounds just a bit too much like a Third World dictatorship rather than the home of the free.

As we learned after Sept. 11, what our intelligence agencies seem to lack is not information, but the ability to collate and interpret it.

It bears repeating that when terrorists frighten us badly enough that we begin casually trading our freedoms for security, they're winning.