What concerns me, is that the government can now recruit the cable guy or the lawn boy to spy on anybody it wants. No need for a search warrant, send in the paperboy.

3 years ago, I had a neighbor that would call the police every time my dog barked. It got to the point where every time my dog barked I would run to the window to tell her to quiet down, but my neighbor had beat me to their window phone in hand. I had the local police out 3 times to tell me a neighbor had made complaints. Nothing came of it since every house in the neighborhood including the neighborhood troublemaker had dogs, and there was nothing the police could do but inform me of the complaint. The problem finally ended when the neighbor was evicted from the house nad auctioned off by the bank. Much nicer people moved in.

Now with neighbors like that ready to inform on me, I really don't need to have done something suspicious. I simply need to tick off my neighbor by letting my dog bark, the neighbor makes a tip to the FBI about how I might be running a NEO-NAZI training program for German Shepherds in North Idaho, and now my name suddenly gets all kind of suspicious activity added to some FBI Database. The database is secret, so I have no idea I am under suspicion, until one day the guy installing my broadband starts snooping around my house looking for anything incriminating.

I have no doubt that this TIPS thing was thought out with the best of intentions, but isn't the road to hell paved with such material? It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see how this could backfire and hurt a lot of innocent people.

I'm sure SSN numbers were thought to be grand as well. We know there are plenty of good people that have had their lives ruined by Identity fraud. TIPS makes that look like small potatoes. I don't like this one bit, and I'm not one to follow conspiracy theories.

Sure some of this might sound like a stretch, but if any American citizen's house is to be searched, then it better be by one with actual authority from a judge. Is that too much to ask?

Steve G.