Googlestalking For Covert NSA Research Funding

James Hardine writes "Wikileaks is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants using one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is 'MDA904'. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the "Maryland Procurement Office" or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA."

Comments

What's the Story here??

[Anonymous Coward]

That you can google for practically anthing and find it on the Internet? That the NSA pours money into research? This isn't news at all.

This is just a veiled attempt at provoking more flamewars because it's got NSA, torture and google, hence this is a flamebait story.

Re:What's the Story here??

[Copid]

The actual story is that the traditional source for engineering funding, DARPA, has been ordered to change to short term projects, as in "a widget for a soldier in 18 months."

That is not what academics do, it is what private sector contractors do.

It's even worse than that. I work for one of those private contractors, and we've been asked three times in the past three years by one of our government's fine agencies if we can produce X in 6 months. We tell them, "No, we can do it, but we'll need 12-16 months." Every time, they come back with the same proposal. Every time, they say, "We're in a hurry because we're up a creek because we didn't get this done earlier." Every time, we tell them we can do it in 12-16 months. Every time, I'm blown away by the fact that the same government that put us on the moon and has run projects from the atomic bomb to stealth bombers can't get its shit together long enough to realize that if they'd simply agreed to the delay, the project they're asking for would have been finished and deployed years ago.

These are the people who are "keeping us safe" from terrorists. God help us.

Conspiracy?

[nacturation]

Google Scholar search results for "MDA904": about 2300
Google Scholar search results for "NSA Grant": about 1720

Doesn't look like many are trying to hide, especially since anybody familiar with the NSA grant code would already know what MDA904 is.

Re:Conspiracy?

[Kadin2048]

Recall that thesis which layed out (using public sources) all the fiber optic cables in the US? The Government wanted to classify his paper and they went ahead and started scrubbing all those public sources of non-classified information. I think it's worth pointing out in the case of the Sean Gorman paper that the author (Gorman) and his institution (George Mason Univ.) didn't protest too hard. They pretty much fell over themselves to voluntarily take all sorts of draconian "security" procedures, because they wanted to get into the good graces of the national security establishment. In fact, Gorman has gone on to become an adviser to various government agencies (through his private firm), and it wouldn't surprise me if the company is supported in large part by the government.

I have a strong suspicion that some of the controversy there was manufactured; both Gorman and GMU got exactly what they wanted out of that whole affair. Gorman launched his career, and GMU is considered a premiere program if you want to get involved with national security: they have a multidisciplinary "Critical Infrastructure Protection" program, a graduate degree in Biodefense, and a long list of former Beltway insiders on faculty. Their institutional culture is worlds apart from what people who are familiar with the big IT campuses might expect. While I'm not saying that the entire thing was scripted ahead of time, they rolled over so fast that it's blindingly obvious where their interests lay.

Torture? Submitter did not RTFA.

[thesandbender]

A sampling of some of these terrible, horrendous projects:

Duality for modules over finite rings and applications to coding theory

Bounding the number of geometric permutations induced by k-transversals

A unified framework for enforcing multiple access control policies

Affine Lie algebras and multisum identities

I think these only qualify as torture if you're a math or computer science graduate student.

The NSA is not a "hands on" group... they are signal intelligence. The bulk of these grants appear to be for exactly that, signal intelligence. I'm sure a few of them may have some mysterious/questionable motives but the bulk of them are nerds working on computers trying to break ciphers or improve our own.

Re:The article is edit by unknown/reserved IP numb

[thesandbender]

This is not an "anonymous" IP block. It's a Class A block reserved by IANA. For example: 6.x.x.x belongs to Army Information Systems Center - USAISC, Yuma Proving Ground, AZ (NET-YPG-NET) 7.x.x.x belongs Defense Information Systems Agency, VA (NET-DISANET2) and it's not just the government that gets love: 9.x.x.x IBM Corporation, NY (NET-IBM) 12.x.x.x AT&T (NET-ATT) 17.x.x.x Apple Computer Inc., CA (NET-APPLE-WWNET) (And Apple can't be evil right?) It is most definitely being spoofed... although, as others have pointed out... this takes some talent.

"Maryland Procurement Office" isn't a cover

[Animats]

It's not much of a cover. NSA lists the Maryland Procurement Office on their web site, in the "Doing Business with NSA" section. It's their central point for contractor invoicing. "DoD IECA PKI Certificate is required to access the website."

NSA used to be far more secretive. But that was a long time ago. Now everyone knows who they are and what they do.

Re:Capture it now, before its disappeared

[mi]

I actually know how it can be used to abuse *YOU*.

All of it can. By breaking up the encryption believed to be secure, NSA can wreck havoc in today's world of information. I — unlike you, who believes, that government funding automatically taints any research (except on the subject of global warming, and even then it better come up with the right answer) — just happened to trust my government a notch more than enemies.

In your world, of course, there are no enemies — only friends, whose grievances we failed to address so far. And since there are no enemies, the only application of the government can be against you... See, I know your side too.

Re:The article is edit by unknown/reserved IP numb

[Repton]

The user talk page for that IP claims it is part of the "Wikileaks anonymizing network".

*YAWN*

[ChePibe]

As fun as it is reading the blatherings of 17-year olds (please, for the sake of my own sanity, do not tell me you are an adult) trying to redirect traffic to a website which seems to put forward the argument that a few intensive viewings of Enemy of the State and a glancing look at Loose Change give one sufficient expertise to discuss the national security apparatus of the United States, I think I'll have a good bit of fun and jump in on this one:

1) There are U.S. government agencies that exist for the purpose of murdering, torturing, and otherwise breaking the law and showing no respect for the law.

You mean that U.S. agencies might - shudder - break the law? Do you really mean that? Honest and for true? Well, knock me over with a feather! It's not as if the CIA - an espionage agency - wasn't openly created for that very purpose in 1947.

Yes, the CIA breaks the laws of foreign countries regularly. All the time. It's part of the CIA's job.

HOLY CRAP, THE EVIL NEO-CON (my personal status as a neo-conservative is quite debatable) ADMITS IT!

OF COURSE the U.S. has an intelligence service devoted to getting information from others through illicit means. EVERY MEANINGFUL COUNTRY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS ONE AS WELL! All of them! Espionage is an accepted part of international relations. It is simply expected. It is used by all sides. Grown-ups have come to deal with this. We also realize that what we see in the movies and what happens in real life are, quite often, different?

Also, why should a U.S. citizen be held liable for breaking the law of another country inside the U.S., while acting at the request of the U.S. government, in a location where, 9 times out of 10, the individual has been granted immunity by the HOST COUNTRY upon entry? Or are you unfamiliar with the Vienna convention of 1961? I'm going to assume so, since given this sort of logic on your own website:

Did the CIA aid in murder? Obviously BBC News thought the story was likely to be true, or it wouldn't have published it. There are certainly many pronouncements of other countries that the BBC ignores. Presumably if the BBC had supportive information, it would have presented it. Since there is no supportive information in the article, presumably there was none.

Since the BBC is the ultimate arbiter of fact and fiction, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you don't.

Then there's this gem:

the problems discussed here seem to come only from one department of the CIA, the department that supports secret action. The other main department of the CIA collects information. There don't seem to be problems with collection of information.

Oh, but what department is it! I can't find any departments in the CIA! Oh, dang, that must be because it's organized in DIRECTORATES! At the time of this blathering, you were most likely speaking of the DIRECTORATE of Operations, presently subsumed into the National Clandestine Service. Perhaps you were simply too lazy to locate this information. Perhaps you were afraid that evil gamma-ray beams from the CIA would melt your brain if you researched it. Or, perhaps, you're discussing some super-secret organization that no one has ever heard of! Ooooh, scary!

2) Those agencies are secret. U.S. citizens must pay for the agencies, but citizens are not allowed to know what the agencies are doing or even how much they are paying.

So, do you advocate that the government make public all of the following information for all citizens?

• Medical files for all who have received government funded health care
• Academic records
• Tax records
• Voting records
• Welfare records
• Driving records
• Social security information
• Nuclear launch codes, the location of all nuclear weapons, the precise method of maintaining and arming nuclear weapons, security around these weapons, etc.

If not, wh