Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Googlestalking For Covert NSA Research Funding

Posted by Zonk on from the because-what-else-are-you-going-to-do dept.

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."

6 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. What's the Story here?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:What's the Story here?? by Copid · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.
      --
      An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
  2. Conspiracy? by nacturation · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  3. Torture? Submitter did not RTFA. by thesandbender · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:The article is edit by unknown/reserved IP numb by thesandbender · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. "Maryland Procurement Office" isn't a cover by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.