Straight from the horse’s mouth:
InfraGard is an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests and combining the knowledge base of a wide range of members. At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector. InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States. InfraGard Chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.
For a little more perspective, a Google image search for InfraGard lays it out quite well.
The short of it is, there are chapters in every state…
… and their memberships are growing…
August 2004 – 10,000
Feb 2008 – 23,000
Sept 2010 – 40,000
May 2011 – 50,056 (including FBI)
At issue here is the ability of the government and corporations to piece together the information they collect in the process of doing business with us into detailed personal profiles on us. One piece of information here or there doesn’t seem like much until you see it all together…
Of course some people like to share and some people don’t. You could likely find all of this information and more in many people’s Facebook Timeline, but it’s their business to share. Flip to any page in a history book, if not today’s newspaper, to find examples of why others don’t leave one-pagers about themselves taped to their front door.
This is new territory for everyone. Humanity has never been able to collect, share and analyze so much data and, in many ways, we are just getting started. Where will the line need to be redrawn next? It’s a continual process that requires both sides to know what’s happening.
And now you know. … At least about InfraGard, which turns out to be only one part of what the ACLU dubbed The Surveillance-Industrial Complex back in 2004. So, once we read the other 32 pages of their report, we’ll only be 8 years behind in the conversation.
