Your papers, citizen!
Posted on 11/28/2004 8:48:51 PM PST by Prime Choice
A university in New York has been funded to keep tabs on IRC conversations with money channelled through the National Science Foundation by the CIA, documents have revealed.
The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chatrooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal.
In April 2003, the CIA agreed to fund a series of research projects that the documents indicate were intended to create "new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology". One of those projects is research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., devoted to automated monitoring and profiling of the behaviour of chatroom users.
Even though the money ostensibly comes from the National Science Foundation, CIA officials were involved in selecting recipients for the research grants, according to a contract between the two agencies obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and reviewed by ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com.
NSF programme director Leland Jameson said on Wednesday the two-year agreement probably will not be renewed for the 2005 fiscal year. "Probably we won't be working with the CIA anymore at all," Jameson said. "I think that people have moved on to other things."
The NSF grant for chatroom surveillance was reported earlier this year, but without disclosure of the CIA's role in the project. The NSF-CIA memorandum of understanding says that while the 11 September, 2001 attacks and the fight against terrorism presented US spy agencies with surveillance challenges, existing spy "capabilities can be significantly enhanced with advanced technology".
EPIC director Marc Rotenberg, whose nonprofit group obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act, said the CIA's clandestine involvement was worrisome. "The intelligence community is changing the priorities of scientific research in the US," Rotenberg said. "You have to be careful that the National Science Foundation doesn't become the National Spy Foundation."
A CIA representative would not answer questions, saying the agency's policy is never to talk about funding. The two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers involved, Bulent Yener and Mukkai Krishnamoorthy, did not respond to interview requests.
Their proposal, also disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, received $157,673 from the CIA and NSF. It says: "We propose a system to be deployed in the background of any chatroom as a silent listener for eavesdropping... The proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chatrooms without human intervention."
Yener and Krishnamoorthy, both associate professors of computer science, wrote that their research would involve writing a program for "silently listening" to an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel and "logging all the messages". One of the oldest and most popular methods for chatting online, IRC attracts hundreds of thousands of users every day. A history written by IRC creator Jarkko Oikarinen said the concept grew out of chat technology for modem-based bulletin boards in the 1980s.
The Yener and Krishnamoorthy proposal says their research will begin 1 January, 2005 but does not say which IRC servers will be monitored.
A June 2004 paper they published, also funded by the NSF, described a project that quietly monitored users of the popular Undernet network, which has about 144,000 users and 50,000 channels. In the paper, Yener and Krishnamoorthy predicted their work "could aid [the] intelligence community to eavesdrop in chatrooms, profile chatters and identify hidden groups of chatters in a cost-effective way" and that their future research will focus on identifying "topic-based information."
Al Teich, director of science and policy programmes at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said he does not object to the CIA funding terrorism-related research in general.
"I don't know about chatroom surveillance, but doing research on issues related to terrorism is certainly legitimate," Teich said. "Whether the CIA ought to be funding research in universities in a clandestine manner is a different issue."
Might I suggest #political on undernet. Those people are warped.
I hope they are keeping tabs on the psychopaths at DU, too.
They'd have to, especially considering the DUmmies' love of terrorists and hatred of America.
Your papers, citizen!
Not all of us.
I remember that nonsense. It was an oversimplification of what Echelon is and what it does. Echelon was never "jammed" by the keyword saturation. Echelon dealt exclusively with semantic forests which rendered those messages irrelevant.
And even if those messages had to be processed, the very idea ignores the sheer computing processing power that the NSA possesses. And baby, it's stuff we won't see on the open market for another 5-10 years.
Duh,
Dah-dah dah dummmmmm.
Another one they already monitor is PalTalk... "talk" chat rooms where there are plenty of explosive discussions, threats, etc. Alot of information there; I cut my teeth on the koran in there, taught by a Coptic Egyptian whose family suffered the consequence of islam. We listened to teachers who taught us the filth of the koran and the true islamic agenda for world dominance. We googled. We debated. And, for sure, those rooms were heavily monitored by the feds. And I say "GOOD"!
I myself called the F.B.I. on more than one occasion. They preach sedition and anarchy.
There are good people who go there as well, defending our country and president.
All Your Chat Rooms Are Belong To Us!
Magic Lanterns are at the upper Echelons of Carnivore - Kubark PING.
Anyone have a link to that FRoldie Goldie, "NSA, COLD BUSTED!!!!!!!" Remember that one?
Here's something they have over at DU....
___________________________________________________________
June 14, 2001
Title: "America at War in Macedonia"
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
July 26, 2001
Title: "NATO Invades Macedonia"
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
Faculty evaluators: Elizabeth Burch, Phil Beard, John Lund
Student researchers: Alessandra Diana, David V. Immel
The CIA destabilized the political balance in Macedonia to allow easier access for a US-British owned oil pipeline, and to prevent Macedonia from entering the European Union (EU), thereby strengthening the US dollar in a German deutschmark dominated region.
Without Macedonia in the EU, British and US oil companies have an advantage over European counterparts in building oil pipelines......
.......The fact that Al Qaeda continues to support KLA terrorist operations in Macedonia, with the full support of NATO and the US government, has been carefully overlooked. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were first recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort.
Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. His was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo. He is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994. Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. (Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.)........
Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001), in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA's proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon. (Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001)
Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the "Islamic Militant Network" are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen. In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK).
The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget, as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, drug money is being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. A major war, supposedly "against international terrorism", has been launched by the Bush Administration. In Macedonia, however, the evidence amply confirms that the Bush Administration (together with NATO) is directly supporting terrorist organisations which have links to Al Qaeda. In other words, the Bush Administration is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. The main justification for waging the so-called war on terrorism has been a total fabrication. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future......
That they do, FRiend. That they do.
My friends at certain computer companies confirm what you say is the truth.
I may have worked with some of your friends in an advisory capacity. :o)
I guess we'll just have to learn to screw with "semantic forests".
Have a look at the patents filed by NSA people on the subject. Makes it difficult to insert chaff that can be convincingly taken for the genuine article.
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