fbi deputizes private contractors with extraordinary powers, including 'shoot to kill.'
my favorite part?
"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."
2 comments:
betmo, This is a jarring story. For a time I thought that the FBI could hold on to its scruples better than this. It just goes to show you that even this agency is vulnerable to letting go of its high regard for the rule of law. Taken together the Justice Department, the NSA, the CIA and the DIA have abandoned us in the name of domestic intelligence. The take-over of good sense seems almost complete.
Do you remember how virulently right wingers used to decry the use of "situation ethics?" by us so-called secular humanists. The way the intel community can operate outside of the rule of law (using their own brand of legal ethics, turned upside down) is ironic and very sad to me.
I posted about this today, and I guess I am still on my high horse.
Betmo
Oh man! Knowing the awesome powers Bush has amassed I absolutely expect them to be used on us. All the industries they work in Bush can take control of when he feels like it.
Supposedly if he thinks there is a threat. I do not like him in possession of any discretionary powers. He can take control of one States national guard and use it against another state if they are uncooperative.
Bottom line, the excuse is there to justify these people but in the end I believe they will be used to control us the real enemies to what is happening to us today.
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