TIPS is one of five programs of the "Citizen Corps" established by President George Bush in January. He touted the snitch operation in his State of the Union address and in a speech in Knoxville, Tennessee, as "a program where truckers can report anything that might be suspicious." The Justice Department is working with bosses in several industries where workers are "ideally suited to help in the antiterrorism effort," according to the Citizen Corps web site.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA), an organization of bosses in the trucking industry, aims to integrate TIPS into its "Highway Watch" program. The plan would enlist spies from among the 3 million truckers traveling on interstate highways and other roads across the country. The ATA receives funds for the TIPS program under a grant from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Training sessions in the trucking industry began in early August with as many as 400 truck drivers participating each month. So far the program has been established in 13 states, including Colorado and Pennsylvania.

The officialdom of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union has endorsed the program. On July 19, it announced in the Teamsters online magazine that "truckers may help with national security." The article states that the program "is enlisting the help of everyday working Americans, including truck drivers, to serve as eyes and ears in the fight against terrorism."

The U.S. Postal Service noted in its July 19 Latest Facts update, "For now, USPS and its letter carriers will not be participating in the Justice Department program called Operation TIPS." The Post Office added that it "already has long-standing processes in place for employees nationwide to report suspicious activity to the Postal Inspection Service and to local authorities."

Several conservative capitalist politicians in Congress, rightists, civil liberties groups, and others have denounced TIPS as promoting vigilantism and assaulting privacy rights. Calling TIPS a "snitch system," Republican congressman Robert Barr condemned it as "a formal program, organized, paid for, and maintained by our own federal government to recruit Americans to spy on fellow Americans." Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national office, condemned the TIPS program, calling it "government-sanctioned peeping Toms."  
 
 
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