Police states and especially totalitarian states rely on civilian informers from among all ranks of society. But the characteristic which distinguishes the latter from the former is that society itself actively participates in its own supervision, and thus the apparatus of police control is socialized; a totalitarian state can also be described as a police society. The constant feedback of a rich flow of data to society's rulers enables a degree of control over it not to be obtained in a mere police state. As part of this, the totalitarian state relies on a much larger pool of recruited, permanent informers than does the police state.
The Nazi Gestapo did not have a large staff of professional agents, and relied mainly on civilian informers for its policing of German society. The Soviet state did have a large professional cadre of domestic agents (amounting to something like 50,000 KGB agents in the 1970s — a further 450,000 employees were border guards), but also recruited millions of ordinary people to report to it (on an unpaid basis) on every aspect of social activity. Every conceivable cell of society, even down to an amateur pop group, was expected to have at least one, and preferably more, members reporting to the "security police" on that cell's activities.
Operation TIPS, the American government's proposal for a huge force of civilian informers, was quietly introduced in mid July 2002. TIPS, a clever acronym of 'Terrorism Information and Prevention System', is to be under the US Justice Department headed by attorney-general John Ashcroft. It would involve millions of American citizens (one report says 11 million), whose work 'puts them in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places'. 'All it will take to volunteer is a telephone or access to the internet'. (Citizen Corps TIPS page) (In Soviet Russia you had to go to your local KGB office to be registered as an informer.)
The initial BBC report of 19 July 2002 (see below) said that TIPS would involve spying within people's homes, by those (such as gas technicians) whose jobs normally take them into homes. The promoters of TIPS have not confirmed this aspect but, significantly, they have not strongly denied it either.
Democrats and Republicans alike have attacked the scheme (see below).
In true police-state fashion, and as if its own authors were half-ashamed of it, Operation TIPS arrived on the scene with the minimum of media coverage. (The only report I found in the first few days was the BBC Ceefax teletext statement (comprising a few sentences) mentioned above — see below.) On 14 July the Washington Post had asked 'What Is Operation TIPS?' , but found it hard at that time to provide adequate answers. ('Apparently the only public information about the program, in fact, is on a government Web site ...') The project's own web page is www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html. It has been launched under the auspices of the Citizen Corps initiative, but is arguably the most significant part of it by far.
On 25 July attorney-general Ashcroft 'told senators ... that he had scrapped plans to include a centralized database' for TIPS. He also 'said the program is not envisioned to include information garnered from private homes by, for example, a telephone service person'. ('Ashcroft: TIPS Plan Won't Have Central Database', Washington Post, 26 July 2002, p.A10) But if Ashcroft's "Justice Dept." keeps no official central database, it doesn't exclude the possibility that other agencies, such as the the CIA or the upcoming Homeland Security Department, wouldn't create their own database from TIPS information. (We should also allow for the possibility that Ashcroft is plain lying about it.) Observe also that Ashcroft did not say that TIPS would not gather information from private homes, only that the program is not envisaged to do it. This is not a concrete statement that it won't be used to spy in people's homes.
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Here is the text of the BBC Ceefax teletext report of 19 July 2002:-
'US POLITICIANS SLAM "CITIZEN SPY" PLAN'A scheme to turn millions of US citizens into spies, as part of an overhaul of domestic security, has come in for widespread criticism.
'Under the plan, 11 m[illion] volunteers whose work takes them into private homes — such as postmen [sic] and gas technicians — would report "suspicious activity".
'Both Democrat and Republican politicians attacked the scheme.
'an amendment has been proposed which could see the scheme banned by Congress.'
(BBC Ceefax, 19 July 2002, p.115)