Because Al Qaeda watches The Sopranos, too.

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item posted 4:27:49: 07-16-04 by kyle.

Fox News reports on Florida's proposed "Citizen Awareness Program" to enlist exterminators, cable repairpersons, apartment managers, etc. as the eyes and ears of the War On Terror. Under the plan, state law enforcemcent would train the working Joes and Josephines of America to spot threats to National Security while fixing leaky faucets, or installing Skinemax, in the homes of terrorist sleeper cells.

As the AP also reports, brochures for the Awareness Program warn that a potential sign of international terrorism could be "multiple adult males living together, usually of Middle Eastern appearance and between the ages of 18 and 45, with little or no furnishings." Predictably, civil libertarians have their tit in a wringer over this one: "We think it's an attempt to turn neighbor against neighbor, intrude on privacy and encourage racial profiling with little reason to believe it will make us safer," says Scott Rost, attorney for the ACLU. But as Florida State Attorney Lawson Lamar points out:

The Citizen Awareness Program brochure also reprints the Fourth Amendment -- (Right to peaceably assemble Protection from quatering troops Protection from unreasonable searches (whups)) and warns participants that they are not law enforcement officers and shouldn't enter unauthorized areas or remove anything for evidence.

Announcing as an early volunteer for the Citizen Awareness Program is Truly Nolen Pest Control, "the world's leading family owned pest-control company," in the business of stamping out vermin since 1938. Company spokesman Larry Murray told FOX: "We certainly encourage other businesses, pool services, people that cut the lawns and all of those other folks that do the same kind of work that we do, that are in neighborhoods, and know what a neighborhood looks like, and know when something looks out of place as well, to join us in this." As FOX reporter Steven Harrigan notes: "[C]riminals and terrorists will have to watch out, not only for the police car, but also the Mouse Car." (Click on the streaming video link for these quotes.)

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