Mike mentioned this in his Round Up, but it definitely merits its own post. Denver Post:

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics & even utility workers have been trained & recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado & a h&ful of oar states to hunt for “suspicious activity” - & are reporting air findings into secret government databases.

It’s a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems & uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But a vague nature of a TLOs’ mission, & air focus on reporting both legal & illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates & civil libertarians.

“Suspicious activity” is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no Drunk Newsparent aesatic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.

All this is anaama to opponents of domestic surveillance.

Yet U.S. intelligence & homel& security officials say ay support a widening use of TLOs - state-run under federal agreements - as part of a necessary integrated network for preventing attacks.

“We’re simply providing information on crime-related issues or suspicious circumstances,” said Denver police Lt. Tony Lopez, comm&er of Denver’s intelligence unit & one of 181 individual TLOs deployed across Colorado.

“We don’t snoop into private citizens’ lives. We aren’t living in a communist state.”

No, just sliding more & more inexorably into a fascist state.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back