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Security officials to spy on chat rooms
Last modified: November 24, 2004, 10:28 AM PST

By Declan 
McCullagh<mailto:declan.mccullagh AT cnet.com?subject=FEEDBACK:Security 
officials to spy on chat rooms> Staff Writer, CNET News.com



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<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epic.org%2Fprivacy%2Fwiretap%2Fnsf_mou.pdf&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 between the two agencies obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information 
Center<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epic.org%2F&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 (EPIC) and reviewed by CNET News.com. 

NSF program director Leland 
Jameson<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nsf.gov%2Fmps%2Fdivisions%2Fdms%2Fbios%2Fjameson.htm&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 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<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fnsf.gov%2Fpubs%2F2004%2Fnsf04561%2Fnsf04561.htm&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>.
 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<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.rpi.edu%2F%7Eyener%2F&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 and Mukkai 
Krishnamoorthy<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.rpi.edu%2F%7Emoorthy%2F&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348-5466140&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>,
 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 

for chatting online, IRC attracts hundreds of thousands of users every day. A 
history<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irc.org%2Fhistory_docs%2Fjarkko.html&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348_3-5466140-2&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 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<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fnsf.gov%2Fawardsearch%2FshowAward.do%3FAwardNumber%3D0442154&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348_3-5466140-2&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 says their research will begin Jan. 1, 2005 but does not say which IRC 
servers will be monitored. 

A June 2004 
paper<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.rpi.edu%2F%7Eyener%2FPAPERS%2F35.pdf&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348_3-5466140-2&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>
 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 chat 
rooms, 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<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aaas.org%2FScienceTalk%2Fteich.shtml&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348_3-5466140-2&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>,
 director of science and policy programs at the American Association for the 
Advancement of 
Science<http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aaas.org%2F&siteId=3&oId=2116-7348_3-5466140-2&ontId=1009&lop=nl_ex>,
 said he does not object to the CIA funding terrorism-related research in 
general. 

"I don't know about chat-room 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."