The Bush Administration plans to set up a phone hotline to encourage truckers and others to report tips on suspicious activity.

Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) was announced this week as part of a 90-page updated strategy for homeland security. The program could begin as soon as August with as many as 1 million volunteers recruited in 10 cities.
A Justice Department spokesperson said trucking and other industries have requested a uniform method of reporting suspicious activities to the authorities. “The industries that will be involved in Operation TIPS represent workers who have regular routines that take them down roads, rivers, coastlines, and puplic transit routes, and through neighborhoods and communities,” Barbara Comstock told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Their jobs make them uniquely well positioned to understand the ordinary course of business in the area they serve, and to identify things that are out of the ordinary.”
In addition to truckers, TIPS volunteers could include 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.
Homeland Security chief Tom ridge, however, told the AP that “there’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante … the president just wants people to be alert and aware.”