AID FROM CITIZENS

The ACLU denounces the use of a website to report “suspicious” activity as an encouragement to spy.

Colorado counterterrorism officials used the 9/11 anniversary to
launch an Internet system that lets ordinary people electronically
report “suspicious activity” – ferreting out possible terrorist
bombers or plotters in their midst.

“One person can make a difference in thwarting terrorism,” State
Patrol Chief Mark Tostel said Monday in unveiling the system.

Civil-liberties leaders immediately denounced the move as deeply
destructive.

The system lets anybody with Internet access send a report and
photos (via www.ciac.co.gov) documenting anything that strikes them
as suspicious.

Officials said suspicious activity may include “unusual requests
for information,” “unusual interest in high-risk or symbolic
targets,” “unusual purchases or thefts,” “suspicious or
unattended packages,” “suspicious persons who appear out of
place” or people acquiring weapons, uniforms or fraudulent
identification.

A report sent through the system would ping the e-mail of a law
enforcement staffer at an intelligence relay station, the Colorado
Information Analysis Center, located in Centennial in a secure
building looped into federal computer networks.

Multi-agency teams in this “fusion” center, with access to
classified data, then would review the report, perhaps running
license-plate or other personal- data checks, and could notify the
FBI.

About 300 tips about possible terrorism-related activity in
Colorado, fielded at the center over the past 18 months, were
deemed significant enough to forward to the FBI, state officials
said. The new electronic system is designed to increase the flow of
information that could be used to stop terrorism.

It’s unclear what happens to names, locations and other information
sent to the FBI. Everybody who sends in a tip will get a response,
officials said.

Coloradans could abuse the system “to undermine their neighbors or
their enemies,” said State Patrol Sgt. Jack Cowart, a former Air
Force intelligence officer who manages the center. But that risk
already exists with the rise of phone-oriented systems that let
Coloradans report “road rage” and crime, Cowart said.

“This is just one more. … We need information from the public to
keep the public safe,” Cowart said.

A counterterrorism telephone hotline (720-852-6705) already draws
up to 20 tips a week to the fusion center. Surveillance crews
sometimes contact police dispatchers, who can send officers to
check out people or places, said State Patrol Capt. Brenda Leffler,
commander at the center.

“I hate it,” said Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado. “This is encouraging
people to spy on one another.”

It moves modern America in the direction of communist societies of
the Soviet Union and China, “where people were encouraged to turn
in their family members, or their neighbors, if they believed those
people were not toeing the government line,” Hazouri said.

“Be careful. Be aware that you could ruin people’s reputations,
ruin their ability to go on an airplane,” Hazouri said. “There
are so many things that grow out of this kind of program.

“It’s almost as though they are trying to tell people that they
need to be afraid. Very afraid. Afraid of people they know, and
especially of people they don’t know.”