‘TIPS’ spelled backward is ‘SPIT’

Several weeks ago I had a problem with my cable box. I’m not a cable expert, but rudimentary problem solving convinced me that it had to be something in the box. So, I called the cable company and they sent someone out.

When the cable guy showed up, I told him I thought there was a problem with the box and explained why. He hemmed and hawed, looked around and told me there was a problem with the wiring and that he would have to rewire the house. I begged him to check out the box. He wouldn’t.

Four hours later, he had rewired part of the house, but the problem persisted, and he told me I’d have to contact the cable company to get someone out and finish the job. Before he left, I asked him if he had a new cable box in the truck, and could he please try swapping it for the old one. He did. Problem solved. Everything now works OK.

While I appreciate the new wiring, although it was unnecessary, I’m worried that this bumbling and unobservant cable guy could form the front line of our terrorist defense. He may soon be commissioned by the government to snoop around my house and check out my reading habits and my furnishings, before phoning in tips about me to the Homeland Security police.

There are so many objections to the so-called TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) program that it’s difficult to know where to start. To begin with, we now have a system, called the telephone, by which anyone who sees something they think is suspicious can call the police or the FBI. Once we move beyond that and systematize a national snooping program, we run a wide range of dangers.

The first, plainly put, is that most untrained people are unreliable observers. They misinterpret innocuous things. They’re easily led astray by eye-catching, but irrelevant, details, ignoring what’s truly relevant. And they become terribly confused when they become excited, which is anytime they see something unusual.

Second, an individual’s view of what is “suspicious” is highly subjective. You and I could look at the same thing. You could become alarmed and I could see it as innocuous. Either one of us could be wrong.

Someone could argue here that it’s better to have too much information, rather than not enough, and that if we get enough information, we will eventually arrive at the truth. However, if you look at the recent revelations about information the government agencies had prior to Sept. 11, it was not that they didn’t have enough information, but that they “failed to connect the dots.”

It would seem to be better to focus on building a more efficient system for analyzing information — something that from all accounts hasn’t been done — rather than collecting more “dots,” many of them from unreliable sources. If you don’t have a good analysis infrastructure, it doesn’t help things to add millions more data points.

But, as you might imagine, my primary objections to the TIPs system are ethical. Neighbor-on-neighbor snooping affects both parties adversely. The watched become suspicious and secretive. The watchers react to that by becoming more vigilant and over reactive. Being cautious comes to be seen as suspicious behavior in and of itself. We then begin the downward spiral into a dismal existence.

An added danger is that some persons designated as informers seek to increase their status by coming up with lots of information. These can be people trying to curry favor with those in charge or people with feelings of inadequacy. In a worst-case scenario, they could simply be settling old scores.

We live our day-to-day lives with some level of mutual trust. This isn’t absolute, but still needs to exist at some level. When we take that trust away, we have done serious damage to our personal interactions and to our open society in general. Those who haven’t lived under this type of system should talk to someone who has before they jump on this bandwagon too cheerfully.

We need to take national security and the terrorist threat seriously, but we need to do it within the parameters of a free and open society. A citizen-spy program has the potential, in the long run, to cause more harm than good. We may eliminate the current terrorists, but we will have lost something — individually and collectively — that we can never reclaim.

Conservatives in Congress wisely removed the TIPS program from the Homeland Security bill passed recently. However, the Bush administration says it will still pursue it, despite opposition from both the right and the left.

As for me, I’d like the cable technician who comes to my house to be competent or the mail carrier to get my mail in the proper box — something that seems to be an overwhelming challenge — rather than having them vetting my reading material.

“TIPS” spelled backward is “SPIT.” This is only fitting, because the whole idea leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

If you send me mail, I promise I’ll read it. You can contact me at ethics_matters@infoworld.com. Or you can join in our Ethics Matters forum at www.infoworld.com/forums/ethics .