It is a dictum for terrorizing times, and as the carnage mounts, law enforcement is more urgently pressing the public to turn tipster.
But what, exactly, does something mean?
That depends.
"If I have a friend who all of a sudden starts going to the masjid [mosque] five times a day, is that a sign of radicalization - or of admirable devotion?" said Quasier Abdullah, assistant imam at Quba Institute, a school and mosque in West Philadelphia.
Abdullah is hardly the only one pondering such judgment calls. Little more than a month before the Orlando massacre, 50 local faith leaders, including imams, pastors, and rabbis, were invited to meet with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in Philadelphia as part of a federal effort to combat terrorism by opening channels to community groups. He encouraged them to find the alienated youths within their circles, to counsel them away from violence - and, if they persist on the path to extremism, to report them.
Self-surveillance is critical, Johnson told them, "given the global terrorist threat environment we face right now."
Many of those present were "happy to be part of the conversation," but they needed guidance, said the Rev. Nicole Diroff, associate executive director of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia.
"See something, say something - sure," she said. "But what does 'saying something' mean? What does this actually look like? How do we do this? This is a nuanced thing. This is a hard thing. Do we have the right tools?"
Johnson offered them technical expertise, such as help in distinguishing between benign websites and those that aim to radicalize.
Some concerns, however, make self-surveillance a tough sell. Ethnic profiling is one, Abdullah said.
"Our communities have some reservations with the government asking us to report on X, Y, and Z. They are very reluctant when the federal government comes with a mandate like this," he said. "But there is no Muslim community in Philadelphia that I am aware of that, if they see criminal activity, would not report it."
The challenge for authorities is to investigate and identify if and when a person's radical beliefs - often inspired by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State - will metastasize into violence.
It is an imperfect science, to be sure, but presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that American Muslims simply need to cooperate more.
"They have to work with us," he said after the Orlando attack. "They know what's going on. They know that [shooter Omar Mateen] was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn't turn them in. And you know what? We had death and destruction."
FBI Director James Comey challenged Trump's assessment. Speaking after the Orlando shootings, he said, "Some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things, who happen to be Muslim."
Dropping a dime on someone whose words or behavior seem menacing does not necessarily prevent tragedy. According to news reports, the FBI interviewed Mateen twice since 2013, both times in response to complaints by coworkers that he had bragged about ties to radical Islam.
Those interviews proved "inconclusive," said Ronald Hopper, the agent in charge in Orlando. "So there was nothing to keep the investigation going."
Mateen's case - one among 10,000 in the FBI's routine workload - was closed.
Had the nation's top law enforcement agency missed the opportunity to intervene? Had the people who knew and worked with Mateen done enough to raise alarm about his reported fascination with ISIS and al-Qaeda?
Daniel Gilroy, a former coworker, said Mateen used slurs to refer to gays, blacks, Jews, and women, and "talked about killing people all the time." He reported Mateen's "unstable, unhinged" behavior to the security company that employed them. Now, he wonders, should he have done more?
"I feel a little guilty that I didn't fight harder," he told multiple news outlets. "If I didn't walk away and I fought, then maybe 50 people would still be alive today."
More than self-surveillance is involved in the local-federal partnerships that Johnson was promoting to Philadelphia's faith communities. They would tap the resources of educators, social workers, and mental health and public health professionals.
Last year, Congress appropriated $10 million to support such collaborations nationwide.
The groundwork was laid in 2011 with a White House report, "Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism." It focused on the role of the internet and social media in advancing extremism.
"We protect our communities from a variety of online threats, such as sexual predators," by educating them about internet safety, the report stated. "We are using a similar approach to thwart violent extremists."
In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security launched pilot programs in Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis.
J. Kelly Hayden, a convert to Islam whose Muslim name is Muhammad Abdul Lateef, is the mosque secretary at Masjid Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sufi mosque in Overbrook. Education and counseling, he said, are as essential as surveillance and law enforcement.
We live in "dangerous times," he said. Extremists "are not talking about being radicalized to go to Syria. They're talking about being radicalized to do something bad here."
To push back, he said, faith leaders need to demonstrate to their most vulnerable members how terrorist recruiters have desecrated Islam.
"They're saying 'Allahu Akhbar,' " Hayden said. "They're taking your religion and dragging it through the mud."
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