State troopers in New Jersey are paying hotel employees $1,000 to spy on their guests and anonymously snitch on them to the police -- a practice the Libertarian Party calls a "shocking police state tactic" that threatens the privacy of hotel guests across the country. 

"For the price of an overnight stay on the New Jersey Turnpike, you get a clean room, a comfortable bed -- and a government informer," said Steve Dasbach, national director of the Libertarian Party. "Thanks to this spy-on-your-guest program, the next time you enter a Holiday Inn to check in, you may end up checking into a jail cell, especially if you're Black or Hispanic." 

Under the New Jersey State Police's so-called Hotel-Motel Program, troopers have been conducting "surveillance seminars" to recruit hotel employees -- from such major chains as the Hampton Inn, the Ramada Inn, and Holiday Inn -- to inform on overnight guests who fit their "profile" of drug smugglers, according to a recent expose in The New York Times. 

Indications of drug trafficking can include paying for your room with cash, taking too many phone calls, or pulling a trailer behind your vehicle, according to police. 

When hotel employees spot such "suspicious" behavior, they are encouraged to call the police, who promise to protect the anonymity of the spy by making arrests off hotel property. If a tip from a desk-clerk-turned-government-informer leads to a successful arrest, the police will pay a $1,000 bounty. 

The snitch-on-your-guest program has been going on since the early 1990s," according to The New York Times, and is modeled after a similar program in Los Angeles and by some federal agencies. 

"Thanks to these kinds of programs, you can be stalked by state troopers, interrogated, and arrested -- all based on information from a hotel clerk who was bribed into invading your privacy," said Dasbach. "Vacationers and business travelers beware: You can now be treated like Public Enemy Number One every time you check into a hotel." 

The danger is especially great if you are Black or Hispanic, noted Dasbach, because like most police profiling operations, the Hotel-Motel Program has a racial component. 

"The police instruct hotel workers to single out African-Americans and Spanish-speaking people for special scrutiny," he said. "Apparently there aren't enough murderers, rapists, and robbers in New Jersey to keep the troopers busy, so they've created two new crimes: Vacationing While Black and Checking In While Speaking Spanish." 

The hotel spy program bears an eerie resemblance to the FDIC's recent Know Your Customer program, said Dasbach, in which the government forced bank tellers to spy on customers and report any "unusual transactions" to federal agents. 

"Call this program Know Your Guest," he said. "First the government coerces your banker into destroying your financial privacy, and now it's bribing bellboys into violating your right to check into a hotel room without alerting the police. 

"Sadly, in America in 1999, police are constantly tracking, monitoring, and investigating innocent people -- even as they lay sleeping. Because of the War on Drugs, racist police, and a casual disregard for our civil liberties, the No-Tell Motel has been turned into the No-Rights Motel."