The photo below appears on the April 4, 2003 washingtonpost.com Metro page:

On a positive note, the number goes to a Virginia state agency rather than to a federal agency. However, a look at the Virginia terrorism preparedness page where the number is also disseminated reveals an information line that is not thought out. In order to prevent racial profiling and neighbors spying on neighbors, there has to be guidelines given to the public. Note only is this not provided, but the links associated with the phone number are either broken or not relevant to terrorism.

This lack of direction, lack of information, and high-profile publicizing has all the worst elements of the U.S. government's ill-fated Operation TIPS. Why is Virginia following the same path? In a nutshell, what we have here is the word "terrorism" and a phone number.

Perhaps what's scariest about this story is that the Washington Post presented the photo with no story, as if this were some self-explanatory picture like that of a snowy day, as if we should expect informant lines as a normal.

See also the Dec. 29, 2002 UnderReported.com story Operation TIPS alive and well in Australia.