A plan announced last week by President Bush to enroll the assistance of truckers and others to report possible terrorist-related suspicious activity looks like it may be killed off on Capitol Hill.

Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), part of a Bush Administration 90-page updated strategy for homeland security, was expected to begin as soon as August with as many as 1 million volunteers recruited in 10 cities. In addition to truckers, the government had planned to look for TIPS volunteers among the ranks of bus drivers, railroad conductors, mail carriers, and local utility repairmen.
The Teamsters union is among those supporting the program, but some civil liberties groups are concerned about privacy issues, invoking images of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian governments. The U.S. Postal Service declined to be a part of the program.
The controversy led a House committee to propose banning the plan as part of legislation creating the new Department of Homeland Security. The bill would ban any operation that would promote citizens spying on one another.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, who wrote the legislation, also would ban the creation of national identity cards, another idea proposed by the Bush Administration, leaving the driver’s licensing process in the hands of the states.