Previous Politech message: "Harvey Silverglate on TIPS-informing, obstruction of justice" http://www.politechbot.com/p-03781.html --- From: "Xeni Jardin" <xeniat_private> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declanat_private> Subject: Der Spiegel on TIPS: citizen-spy ratio would be higher than in fmr GDR Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:11:15 -0700 Interesting analysis of TIPS in German-language Der Spiegel today, which includes detailed comparison of the projected number of TIPS participants to the number of citizen informants that cooperated with the state security system in former East Germany. Story projects that the percentage of citizen-spies under TIPS would be over four times greater than the percentage of citizen-Stasi-informants in former GDR. *Very* roughly translated excerpt, between babelfish and my extremely poor grasp of German: <<Bush wants a country full of informers by Alexander Schwabe Almost one year after September 11, US president George W. Bush is trying to transform the country into a society full of informants. In August operation "TIPS" starts, its newest weapon in the fight against terrorism. If the pilot project should work satisfactorily, the informer ratio in the states will soon be higher than it ever was in the GDR [former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany--XJ].(...) Above all, the authorities want to win over persons whose work places them at the interface between public and private domains of society. Bus drivers, postmen, telephone workers, truck driver...gas or water servicers...are to go with sharpened senses and the will through the world to call a toll-free number if something seems suspicious to them. In ten cities in August the pilot project will start. One million informants are to supervise their fellow citizens. If the attempt meets the ten largest cities of the USA, this meant that there would be one million informants for 24 million inhabitants (just around four percent)...>> German: <http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,206079,00.html > Google-translated to English: <http://216.239.35.120/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%7Cen& u=http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,druck-206079,00.html&prev=/la nguage_tools> ---------------------------------------------- Xeni Jardin freelance journalist + conference manager xeniat_private | www.xeni.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jul 23 2002 - 04:07:38 PDT