My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.

Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.

Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.

Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.

Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?

The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.

I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.

Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well

I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.

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