Monday, March 15, 2010

A Public/Private Partnership

FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill'...

InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the "trade secrets" exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed. [More]
Sounds pretty fascist to me.

We do need to bear in mind that this report is written under the banner of "The Progressive." Still, we shouldn't just dismiss it out of hand. Is it leftist hysteria? Or does this make some good points that we ignore at our peril?

Here's the InfraGard website.

Anybody here have any kind of direct knowledge about them?

[Via Steven L]

5 comments:

zach said...

Alex Jones broke it before it was public quite a few years ago. Since then, I don't think we've learned any more about it. Very hush hush. We do know it's for our safety, however.

Paul W. Davis said...

Doesn't this say everything we really need to know?

"InfraGard is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) program that began in the Cleveland Field Office in 1996. It was a local effort to gain support from the information technology industry and academia for the FBI’s investigative efforts in the cyber arena. The program expanded to other FBI Field Offices, and in 1998 the FBI assigned national program responsibility for InfraGard to the former National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) and to the Cyber Division in 2003. InfraGard and the FBI have developed a relationship of trust and credibility in the exchange of information concerning various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters."

It's called "co-opting" and anyone who falls for it can also be co-opted by a communist/fascist government as well.

Longbow said...

oh hell..

You ain't one them 'streamists who believes is all that Infraguard nonsense are ya?

Whuh...?

Oh, yeah, uhhhh... ne'r mind.

Anonymous said...

naaaa ... Dave, I'd back away from that one Bro. And hey, I believe in "many" conspiracies (course, I dont call em that)... But, eh, em, this one, is totally BuLL$heeet. Now while nothing is TOO EXTREME for AJ ----- Jesse V, I like. Enjoy his show.. However, when I saw his "report" on this .... I was a quite depressed.... I think hes a VERY smart guy, and should have been able ditch this dirt .... But, he ran with it --- and unfortunately (with many) he hurt his "cred" a bit.

If you want to criticize the program, sure, there might be "some" areas... maybe you could say its: the Gov't "making friends" with business folks to get "free intel" (info sharing initiative) into whats goin on out there....

But, I'd stay away from the License to kill rhetoric --- I'd say that is just flat-out CRAZY talk... and completely unsubstantiated......

jon said...

cryptome reports the fbi ordered a database on the knowledge/skillset of 28,000 IT professionals at infragard.