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-- Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), encouraging private citizens, including postal employees, to report "unusual" neighborhood activities;
-- the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA), renamed Terrorism Information Awareness to monitor anyone suspected of terrorism or activities related to it;
-- the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) program, amassing a huge data base by domestic spying, done spuriously against anyone suspected of terrorism; and
-- the Transportation Security Agency's SPOT program (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques), using behavioral detection officers to identify threats by observing and reporting suspicious behavior based on unscientific behavioral indicators.
Policing Free Speech
On June 29, an ACLU report titled, "Policing Free Speech: Police Surveillance and Obstruction of First Amendment-Protected Activity" highlighted the present danger. It also cited the long history of America's law enforcement agencies illegally spying on US citizens and obstructing lawful political activity. It "was rampant during the Cold War under the FBI's COINTELPRO, the CIA's Operation Chaos, and other programs," continuing now more obtrusively than ever under new names or none at all.
As a result, "Law enforcement agencies across America continue to monitor and harass groups and individuals for....peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights," eroding and gravely endangered.
In recent years, federal as well as in at least 33 states and the District of Columbia, Americans have been surveilled, otherwise monitored or harassed by police for engaging in marches, protests, organizing, having "unusual viewpoints, and engag(ing) in normal, innocuous behaviors such as writing notes or taking photographs in public.
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