Who's watching you? TLO information

Terrorism Liasion Officers are often non-law enforcement people, like firefighters, who are asked to report suspicious behavior.

Arizona is in the forefront of the fight against terrorism with one of its major tools: the Terrorism Liaison Officer (TLO).

TLOs are usually non-law enforcement people such as firefighters and paramedics who receive about 40 hours of training in order to report suspicious behavior in the course of their jobs to the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC). Those reports are put in the state database for further investigation, and could be sent to federal terrorist databases.

"Arizona was one of the first states to establish a TLO program," said Lieutenant Larry Perry of ACTIC. He said there are 200 TLOs trained in the state to provide reports on suspicious behavior, which are then investigated, and potentially forwarded to federal authorities. He believes it's an important information resource in the fight against terrorism, but not everyone agrees.

"It's a serious privacy threat to normal American citizens who aren't accused of any crime." said John Verdi of the Electronic Privacy Center.

Verdi said that suspicious activity can be anything from taking a picture of a downtown building to expressing anti-government sentiments, or even wearing blue jeans.

"We don't want to discourage the public sending this information in, because that one [piece of] information they send in could be that one lead we are looking for," said Lt. Perry.

Web site 8signs.org descirbes what's considered to be suspicious behavior and provides information on how to report it.