Digg: Martial Law Outsourcing: The FBI deputizes business
http://digg.com/politics/Exclusive_The_FBI_Deputizes_Business
Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business
By Matthew Rothschild, February 7, 2008
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.
InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.
“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.
InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.
“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.
“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”
In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”
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Read more of the article at
http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308.
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Also read from the ACLU:
Should we ask the campaign
to comment on this?
I'd like to hear what Dr. Paul says about all this..
Secret Police?
Berlin anyone?
This is one more reason to make sure you have stuff put away when cable repairmen, plumbers, etc come over. Bush sought to use them as spies since they don't need search warrants to come into your home.
Put everything away and make sure you stay near the person at all times. Don't automatically just trust that they wouldn't ever be snooping while you aren't around.
Scary indeed
Of course, NSPD 51 gives Bush almost dictatorial powers in case of a declared emergency and cannot be reviewed by Congress for 6 mos. I believe all he has to do is declare a national emergency from a terrorist attack, economy meltdown, basically whatever....
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12....
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"I killed the banks"
Almost dictatorial?
That IS dictatorial, in every definition of the word.
He can declare a national emergency from pretty much anything he wants. Econonic problems? He can use that to declare martial law. It states something like "other reasons" in what he can use to declare it. That basically says for whatever reason he wants.
That's why martial law when legally enacted, keeps congress and the courts still having their checks and balances. Under Bush's martial law, they lose all their powers.
Heil Bush
Didn't mean to sound
like I was minimizing the threat, I just wasn't sure if '51' alone gave him all those powers, although I know it provides most of them as well as defining the circumstances. I think there are some other PD's that add to it. PD's and EO's for the last several decades have been building the this kind of power for the office. I think '51' is kind of the capstone (so to speak).
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"I killed the banks"
I believe
more and more everyday that it is going to happen too.
Heil Bush! Heil Cheney!
Yawohl!
"We don't have to start a brand new revolution...All we have to do is restore the original Constitution." -Ron Paul
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"...a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." -John F. Kennedy