Time Magazine
Program Trains Americans to Spy on Each Other
Tue Jul 6, 2004 02:02
64.140.158.79

Homeland Security 'Highway Watch' Stasi Program Trains Americans to
Spy on Each Other

Time Magazine | July 5 2004 Issue

On a blazing hot morning last week, 75 men and women of the highway -
bus drivers, truckers and van operators - convened at a nondescript
office building in Little Rock, Ark., to be trained as terrorist
hunters. The Department of Homeland Security this year gave $19.3
million to the American Trucking Associations, which is based in
Alexandria, Va., to recruit a volunteer "army" called Highway Watch.
So far, 10,000 truckers have signed on to become amateur sleuths.
Over the next year, the goal is to add tollbooth workers, rest-stop
employees and construction crews, creating a corps of 400,000 people
drawn from every state.

Waiting for the training to begin, Jo Anna Cartwright, who manages
the rural public bus system in northern Arkansas, said she had not
yet encountered any terrorists in her job, as far as she knew. "We
got a terroristic phone call the other day," she said, "but it turned
out it was just the boyfriend of an employee." Her bus drivers pay
special attention to a gentleman from Afghanistan who recently
married a regular rider, she said. Cartwright had come to the
training to learn what else she could do.

The tutorial was led by Jeffrey Beatty, a security consultant,
formerly of the FBI and CIA. He started by showing clips of alQaeda
training videos. "They are out there training for operations in the
U.S. homeland. Make no mistake about it," he said, warning that
Little Rock cannot afford to be complacent. "You're getting a
presidential library here - for a President who launched cruise
missiles against al-Qaeda," Beatty said, referring to Bill Clinton.
There are not enough police and federal agents to protect all of
America, but transportation workers could be a "force multiplier," he
said. "We want to turn the hunters into the hunted," he intoned for
the first of four times that day.

So how exactly does one spot a terrorist on the highway? Members of
Highway Watch are given a secret toll-free number to report any
suspicious behavior - people taking pictures of bridges, for example,
or passengers handling heavy backpacks with unusual care. "We want to
hear from you when something just doesn't look right," Beatty said.
"Say you're out at a truck stop and you see someone hanging out near
your truck, wearing a jacket. Maybe it's too hot out for a jacket. Go
back inside, alert someone and check him out through the window."

But - and this is important - Highway Watch members are just
messengers, not superheroes, Beatty said. The hotline call center in
Kentucky logs the information it receives in a database and contacts
law enforcement when necessary. It usually isn't. Of the 200 or so
calls that come in each month, only about 10 have anything to do with
suspected terrorism. Most callers report abandoned vehicles, stranded
motorists or roadway hazards. Highway Watch members are instructed to
look for certain kinds of behavior - not certain kinds of people.
"Profiling is bad. Bad, bad, bad," Beatty said.

Still, listening to his ominous warnings and the bravado that comes
easily to the former Delta Force commander, one has no difficulty
imagining an empowered civilian getting carried away. And Americans
generally have not reacted well to institutionalized nosiness. In
2002 the Justice Department proposed something called Operation TIPS,
which would have encouraged not just truckers but also cable
installers and mail carriers, among others, to report suspicious
behavior. But before the program could begin, it was buried in
opposition from the left and the right. Americans did not want to
become a "nation of snitches," as the libertarian Cato Institute put
it.

Highway Watch, which will receive an additional $22 million next
year, preserves the part of TIPS concerned with monitoring behavior
in public space. The Department of Homeland Security has also
launched Port Watch, River Watch and Transit Watch. Then there are
the familiar Neighborhood Watch groups, many of which have expanded
their missions to include homeland security. In New York City,
government outsourcing of surveillance has even trickled down to
doormen and building superintendents, thousands of whom are being
trained to watch out for strange trucks parked near buildings and
tenants who move in without furniture.

After the session in Little Rock, two newly initiated Highway Watch
members sat down for the catered barbecue lunch. The truckers, who
haul hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to
spot "Islamics" on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few
of them are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark.
"I'll be honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops.
There's still a lot of animosity toward Islamics." Eddie Dean of Fort
Smith, Ark., also has little doubt about his ability to identify
Muslims: "You can tell where they're from. You can hear their
accents. They're not real clean people."

That kind of prejudice is hard to undo, but it's a shame Beatty's
slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always Sikhs
who wear turbans, not Muslims. Last year a Sikh truck driver who was
wearing a turban was shot twice while standing near his tractor
trailer in Phoenix, Ariz. He survived the attack, which police are
investigating as a hate crime.

The Highway Watch website boasts that the program is open to "an
elite core [sic] of truck drivers" who must have clean driving and
employment records. In fact, their records are not vetted by the
American Trucking Associations. At the Little Rock event, some came
in off the street without preregistering. However, the organization
is highly security conscious about other parts of its operations. It
refuses to disclose the exact location of its hotline call center or
the number of operators working there. "It could be infiltrated,"
says Dawn Apple, Highway Watch's director of training and recruitment.

What's clear is that Highway Watch is a morale booster for drivers.
"I don't want to sound too hokey, but truck drivers are a very
patriotic bunch," says Mike Russell, a spokesman for the
organization. "It made sense for us to take advantage of what we do
every day - which is, basically, patrol major highways through a
windshield."

Just three days after his training in Little Rock, veteran Wal-Mart
truck driver Danny Ewell found cause to call Highway Watch. On
Father's Day, as he was leaving a Red Lobster in Johnson City, Tenn.,
he saw a young man walking between two cars with an orange T shirt
draped over his arm. Peeking out from under the T shirt was a
semiautomatic weapon. "Because of the training, I knew to look at his
height and his hair color, and I got the make and plates of his car,"
Ewell says. "Normally I would have just looked at his clothes. But
now I know to look for things that won't change." Ewell called 911
and Highway Watch. Local police responded but were unable to find the
man. Ewell, at least, had done his part.

[END]

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