The FBI Deputizes Business

[Joanne98]

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.”
http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20%26%20Legal/FBI_DeputizesBusiness.html

[L0oniX]

1. I wish we had something to warn us when an idiot is about to crash into our cars.

I am not worried about any stinking terrorist, I am much more concerned with the other drivers. Chances are that you and I will die in a car accident before we'd ever get it from a terrorist.

[monktonman]

2. I have more of a chance of being killed by a meteor...

than a terrorist.
Whats the FBI doing to combat meteor proliferation in the universe?

[peacetalksforall]

3. They are closing in on us - their version of martial law on our personal

rights is circling and closing. Last deadline for their takeover of us - Jan 09.

Scary. Combine will all the other scary rights abuse and rights theft. They do not want us to protest anything they do to us. They don't want to be halted, slowed, or stopped.

You are only allowed six S's and some other things - shopping, sports, serials, sensationalism, spying, statistics. They only want us to go shopping, play or watch sports, watch serial and survivor programs on tv, allow all our information available in their database for their own purposes, believe what corporate tv tells us, believe their statistics.

They want us subservient, obedient, and stupid. They want to privatize everything in our country for their control and profit.

Every piece of their agenda is for their profit and control over us.

Our country is in the process of being stolen.

By our own.