by NewStandard Staff
Dec 12 - Documents obtained by a public interest research center show that the US Central Intelligence Agency and the National Science Foundation collaborated to fund researchers developing software to electronically spy on Internet chat rooms.
The documents, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) through a Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by The NewStandard, show that $157,673 was awarded to researchers Bulent Yener and Mukkai Krishnamoorthy to fund the development of chat room surveillance software. That document includes information about the project -- conducted under the auspices of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York -- the objective of which is described as the establishment of a "fully automated surveillance system for data collection and analysis in Internet chat rooms to discover hidden groups."
The document further explains that surveillance will determine what is being discussed in various chat rooms, who is discussing those topics, and if the topic is "hot" in a particular chat room. "Thus, the proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chat rooms without human intervention," the document states.
The description goes on to explain that the "award is supported jointly by the NSF and the Intelligence Community."
Another document obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act is a "Memorandum of Understanding" between the National Science Foundation and the CIA outlining a "jointly funded research initiative" to "encourage long-term high-risk research approaches to scientific research in support of the nation’s fight against terrorism."
While the amount of money provided by the CIA to the initiative has been blanked out, the Memorandum shows the National Science Foundation contributing $2.5 million in both fiscal years 2003 and 2004. The document also shows that the National Science Foundation is providing 70 percent of the funding, leading The NewStandard to extrapolate that the CIA provided an average of $1 million in each of those years.
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1307Published on Tuesday, October 12, 2004 by the Associated Press
Bush Funds US Spying on Internet Chat Rooms
by Michael Hill
CYBERSNOOP
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer science professor Bulent Yener poses in his office in Troy, N.Y., on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004, with a map created by Bell Labs of the major Internet Service Providers as they existed on Aug. 19, 1999. Yener wants to develop mathematical models that can uncover structure in the scattershot traffic of chat rooms. (AP Photo/Jim McKnight)
A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer science professor hopes to develop mathematical models that can uncover structure within the scattershot traffic of online public forums.
...
Trying to monitor the sea of traffic on all the chat channels would be like assigning a police officer to listen in on every conversation on the sidewalk - virtually impossible.
Instead of rummaging through megabytes of messages, RPI professor Bulent Yener (yener@cs.rit.edu) will use mathematical models in search of patterns in the chatter. Downloading data from selected chat rooms, Yener will track the times that messages were sent, creating a statistical profile of the traffic.
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"For us, the challenge is to be able to determine, without reading the messages, who is talking to whom," Yener said.
In search of "hidden communities," Yener also wants to check messages for certain keywords that could reveal something about what's being discussed in groups.
The $157,673 grant comes from the National Science Foundation's Approaches to Combat Terrorism program. It was selected in coordination with the nation's intelligence agencies.
The NSF's Leland Jameson said the foundation judged the proposal strictly on its broader scientific merit, leaving it to the intelligence community to determine its national security value. Neither the CIA nor the FBI would comment on the grant, with a CIA spokeswoman citing the confidentiality of sources and methods.
....
Mark Rasch, a former head of the Justice Department's computer crimes unit, said such a system would bring the country one step closer to the Pentagon's much-maligned Terrorism Information Awareness program.
Research on that massive data-mining project was halted after an uproar over its impact on privacy.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1012-02.htm