CIA Researching Automated IRC Spying

Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that the CIA has been quietly investing in research programs to automatically monitor Internet chat rooms. In a two year agreement with the National Science Foundation, CIA officials were involved with the selection of recipients for research grants to develop automated chat room monitors. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute received $157,673 from the CIA and NSF for their proposal of '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.' How soon until all IM conversations are monitored by Big Brother? The abstract of the proposal is available on the NFS website."

Comments

It wont really be any good...

[Folmer]

Even if its able to spy on private chat rooms on major networks, they wont be able to spy on thoose who dont want to be spied on... Its relatively easy to set up your own IRC server, and control exactly who has axcess to it so the feds are left outside alone...

Re:It wont really be any good...

[elh_inny]

I totally support this opinion.
Open source IRC daemon running on open source OS.
An invite only channel, with key, now where does CIA plan to step in?
And it's obvious no valuable information will be exchanged via popular IMs. I once though it would, as there is so much traffic, that no one is able to comprehend it, bu as soon as I wanted to relay sth valuable, let's say a password or whatever, delicious cookie recipe, I used secure channels.
Now why would they want to spy on 14 year olds, I don't know.
How can they differntate what's real, I remeber that somwhere out there there is this Echelon system working, recording all my phone call and checking for 'special' words. I try to use 'nuke', 'osama', 'chemical weapons' in few languages, but the black suits still refuse to come.

In general I'm not so paranoid, I don't think that we're facing Orwellian times. The main reason for that, there are not enough human resources to have it working. Let's say we wanted every person in the world to be spied on by another person, the way it is done now, is in shifts, at least two people involved, usually much more. Now technology helps with this problem, let's say we can record every minute of a man's life, there still has to be someone to watch all that footage, if we go on, we could probably end up with only half of the population in the BigBrother business, I think with current economy it is not possible.
I could elaborate on this subject a bit more, but I hope you get my point.

Not the government's fault

[EM Adams]

The only reason the government gets technology like this developed is intelligent people will do anything for their degree or grant money. Until we all stand together and refuse to help Americans spy on other Americans or any one else in the world our rights will continue to slowly errode because of people like the researchers at Rensellaer. Really, they are the ones who need to be punished by ostracizing them from the scientific community and their neighborhoods to make it clear that any one who accepts tax dollars to further the goals of Big Brother are not welcome in our hearts or minds as comrades.

Echelon - already done

[Magickcat]

Anyone who thinks that the CIA doesn't already have systems to automatically monitor email, chatrooms etc - needs to read a bit more on intelligence technology. This would fall under "Echelon" anyhow.

The NSF might lack the tools, but I sincerely doubt that the CIA are developing these sorts of very basic tools. More likely, the NSF aren't given access or information on the extent of CIA information gathering.

Also, I imagine such a news article makes the public likely to believe that the technology isn't already in active use.

give me your money, slave.

[twitter]

I don't see how people can be upset about monitoring chatrooms, unless they were actually doing something questionable with that data. As most of IRC is a completely public network by design, there is no expectation of privacy.

It's easy to understand why I'm upset. You might understand the next time you pay your taxes. Remember that a fraction of your hard work is going to pay for your government to listen in on your conversations. Many people are making a living at it. I think they and my government have better uses for my money. I did not ask for it, I don't like it and I don't want to pay for it. it's also well-known that your IP address is exposed to all those on the server.

If you don't mind that kind of thing, perhaps I can interest you in a few personal services. For the low price of $50/hr, I'll log all of the communications from your "exposed" IP address, cull what I want, damage your reputation by questioning your peers if I note anything suspicious and even charge you with crimes if you happen to say the wrong thing. Most of the work will be automated but I take no responsibility for the information being stolen by insurance companies, employers and other organizations that have a direct impact on your quality of life. By freedom of information, I'll be sure to let people know that I'm investigating you but I'll tell them that I'm an official government agency, so they won't question my motives and will instead turn their suspicions onto you. Sound like a good deal?

Pay up!

Re:Juristiction?

[qbzzt]

AFAIK, there is no international law about spying. This means that there is no rule that says that a government cannot spy on people in other countries. They don't need a search warrant or a wiretap warrant.

This means that there is no law stopping the US government from spying on Europeans, or for that matter European governments from spying on people in the US. A government can even use this to bypass its own privacy regulations by having a friendly government spy on its citizens and getting that information.

If you want to stop wiretapping, use encryption. Do not assume that a legal barrier is going to stop a secretive organization with little oversight into its activities.

public vs private in cyberspace

[Doc Ruby]

The CIA should be operating in public spaces - there's little expectation of privacy in public. joeschmo can watch IRC traffic, so spy007.exe should be able, too. The control points on this activity lie at a slightly deeper level: we need a definition of "public" vs. "private" on the Internet that can work in courts and congresses as well as in compilers and chatrooms. And the CIA, or any organization (government, corporate, NGO or otherwise) must abide copyright constraints, which include right to copy personal info (including message traffic) for the express purpose in the license. In the case of the CIA, that means info that is read from public data must be either immediately discarded, for the purpose of separating data relevant to an operation from that which is not; or, if stored, it must be directly relevant to an operation. That further requires the CIA define the scopes of its operations sufficient for Congressional oversight to second-guess decisions of what data to retain.

Of course, cynics (like me ;) will say that once the CIA is operating at all in this medium (it surely already is), the finer points of policy and law will be given mere lip service, and abuse will be the norm. Unfortunately, the CIA has Americans over a barrel: their legitimate service is essential, while their unaccountability is lethal, in the survival of our society. This issue doesn't change that dilemma, though it forces the issue - and ought to pressure exactly these kind of delineations. Since the current purges at the CIA seem likely to merely institutionalize the Iran/Contra CIA abuses to the exclusion of any legitimate control, we who understand these issues can at least understand their workable boundaries, and enforce them ourselves, for ourselves. Like comprehensive crypto for messaging, which defines an expectation of privacy, whether defensible from CIA codebreaking filters or not. It's all we've got, and will be harder for the CIA, or any other prying eyes, to casually violate, either on the Net or in a court.