I'm not averse to professional law enforcement keeping an eye on people whom they suspect of plotting or trying to harm, terrorize and kill people. In theory, the U.S. has had persons trained to do that for years. Maybe we need to make them more effective or give them more resources, or whatever they need to do a better job. The problem with this particular TIPS proposal is that it appears to be wanting to recruit a lot of untrained ordinary citizens to participate. I have no problem asking people in general to keep their eyes and ears open but this more formal "recruitment" of say postal workers, truck drivers, UPS personnel, etc. could be fraught with all kinds of problems in the end and actually lead to a bigger mess. Besides the obvious potential for invasion of privacy, I can see the waste of valuable personnel having to chase down a lot of bad leads with a likely resultant rise in lawsuits against the government for defamation, malicious prosecution, harassment, various discrimination violations, emotional distress, etc., etc. This one is a bad and dumb idea. Doesn't mean we can't come up with a smarter one.
Kakki
