Catfish-and-Grits

OMFG!!!!

WTF is going on here. First the president admits we torture using waterboarding. Now, we find out the some in the business world have been deputized. Remember, during Katrina, that some BlackWater mercenaries were deputized and threaten many evacuees. It didn't come out until for weeks, until some investigative journalists heard rumors and began to look into it. Now this:

[The Progressive Magazine]

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 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....

[snip]

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.”

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant....

[snip]

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005..........He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

(emphasis mine)

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.

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....

[snip]

In return for being in the know, InfraGard members cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “InfraGard members have contributed to about 100 FBI cases,” Schneck says. “What InfraGard brings you is reach into the regional and local communities. We are a 22,000-member vetted body of subject-matter experts that reaches across seventeen matrixes. All the different stovepipes can connect with InfraGard.”

[snip]

This special status concerns the ACLU.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”

They are turning us into a surveillance society, where every body spies on everybody. So much for the Constitution. Below are some reference documents, and analysis:

[ National Security Presidential Directive 51 ] -- This directive place the US under the control of the Executive Branch, solely, in the event of a "catastrophe". What's so brazen, is the Bush Administration redefines what a catastrophe is.

[ Senate Bill 1959, The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Act of 2007 ] -- Unfortunately this is supported by some uninformed Democrats. In a nutshell, what the bill wants to do is to pinpoint where the "disgruntle people" diseffected with their government are. In other words, anyone who speaks out against the government could be arrested under this bill if it is passes. And even though there is a section called, PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM, it delegates authority to the executive branch to "watch out" for civil rights violations. Yeah right.....and what is Bush' track record so far, I digress.

(First Amendment, we don't need no stinkin' freedom of speech....Hail Stalin)