Little Support For TIPS

Washington - The Bush administration wants a new set of eyes - millions of them.

But perched in his rig at a truck stop near Jessup, Md., George Freeman shook his pony-tailed head at a proposed terrorism informant network that would rely on millions of American workers to feed the government tips on suspicious activity.

"It's going to be overused and abused, especially with people so nervous as it is," said Freeman, 45, who hauls produce cross-country. "You're going to have people running every which way looking for terrorists and their 15 minutes of glory."

Freeman's concerns were echoed by a slew of privacy-minded groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and legislators from both sides of the ideological divide last week, perhaps signaling that Americans want some limits on governmental intrusion despite the new threats from abroad.

On Thursday, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security drafted legislation that would prohibit instituting national standards for driver's licenses - critics said that sounded too much like a national ID card that could be used to track people - and any operation resembling TIPS, the Terrorism Information and Prevention System.

"I just don't think it fits our concept of our liberties in America," said House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), who chairs the committee. "I don't think there's a threat that justifies a program of this nature."

A spokeswoman for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which drafted the Senate's version of a Homeland Security Department unveiled Friday, said its bill is "silent on those issues."

A Justice Department official said the Bush administration would continue to pursue the Operation TIPS program, part of the Citizen Corps suggested in the State of the Union address in January. "It delivers an important resource for those who take the time to understand how it works," she said.