Attorney General Ashcroft testified about Operation Tips yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committees.

He defended Operation Snoops, explaining that it would not have its own database. Rather, he said, it would be a referral service, whereby calls from citizens about other citizens' (their neighbors' and employers' and customers' )odd activities would be transferred to federal and state law enforcement agencies.

Like those agencies aren't going to log the transferred calls into their own databases? What's the difference whose database it is? Isn't the point of contention here that we don't want to be spied on and have information about what people think they see, or believe they saw, or didn't see but decide to lie and say they saw, end up in the hands of the Government?

We like ACLU Director Laura Murphy's comments as reported in the article: "Notwithstanding all of these assurances, this is still government-sanctioned peeping Toms. This is a program where people's activities, statements, posters in their windows or on their walls, nationality, and religious practices will be reported by untrained individuals without any relationship to criminal activity."

For today's op-ed piece against the Rat Pact, we like The Societal Cost of Surveillance in the New York Times. (Free Registration Required.)