Hi,

The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms 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 behavior of chat-room 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 CNET News.com.

NSF program director Leland Jameson said 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 chat-room 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 Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the fight against terrorism presented U.S. 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 U.S.," 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 chat room as a silent listener for eavesdropping...The proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chat rooms 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

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So next time you find that 22/F .............beware it might be a Security offcier Chatting with you

Cheers
-=SF_13=-

u know...i haven't really been a fan of chatrooms since the whole pedophile thing that's been going on. so the next time you talk to that 14/f that you think is so cute, i got money saying it's an old horny guy with tons of p_rn on his computer. if not him, then i'd say maybe that security officer.

I agree if it is for security reasons. Who really cares?

Just keep talking pay no attention to me

I think it is a great thing.... and while there at it maybe they could zap a few ppls computers that abuse the power. like the pervs and the terrorists and whatever or whoever else that needs to be "taken care of" the way i see it is if you're not doing anything wrong then you won't get busted!!

Originally Posted by 03USMC

Just keep talking pay no attention to me

Or me....

you know they may even be reading my post right now, so i better stop talking about my secret take over of the states or...what was that? oh crap they found me...easy with the cuffs will ya...people avenge me avenge me!

You not know that already? Chat rooms on yahoo,AOL,MSN etc are watched over by the uk gov................taking to the fact that insurgents use these places to cath people out on info.

Its amazing what you can find out. Even ppl pretending they are military spurting their mouth off can cause trouble.

Inshallah

I'm not supprised, hopefully this will help defeat the pervert things going on in those places.