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??

[mbkennel]

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.

Hence the academics have been overwhelming the National Science Foundation since 2001 or so. Acceptance rates for NSF research proposals are at all time lows. If the NSA also gives money for mathematics and certain segments of computer science, apparently all publicly published, why not take it?

It has been usual since 1945 that source for non-biological scientific and mathematical research have come through multiple government agencies, many military-affiliated.

What happens if you don't accept this funding? Somebody else gets it, and they get papers and grants and they stay funded. You don't. You probably won't get promotions or tenure without signficant government funding. If you're on soft money, you're just plain unemployed.

What will your protest do to stop torture by CIA or whoever? Nothing. BTW those policies didn't come spontaneously from CIA---they were ordered and approved by political appointees.

BTW: "MDA" usually means "Missile Defense Agency".

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.

Warnung!: Conspiracy theory

[meburke]

Actually, the googled links are a plant to test software that helps the NSA determine who is interested in it's activities, and the grant code is a key to tracing the CPU runningthe browser that is doing the googling.

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.

The article is edit by unknown/reserved IP number

[vinsci]

Click the History tab of the article. This reveals the edit history:

# (cur) (last) 20:56, 7 October 2007 1.0.22.53 (Talk) (7,349 bytes)
# (cur) (last) 19:22, 3 October 2007 Wikileaks (Talk | contribs) m (6,644 bytes)
# (cur) (last) 15:18, 29 September 2007 Wikileaks (Talk | contribs) m (6,624 bytes)

Running whois on the IP number 1.0.22.53 comes up with nothing, it's just a reserved net block, according to IANA. So, who could that be? Who's got the power to get anonymous IP number blocks?

$ whois 1.0.22.53

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

NetRange: 1.0.0.0 - 1.255.255.255
CIDR: 1.0.0.0/8
NetName: RESERVED-9
NetHandle: NET-1-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: IANA Reserved
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2002-09-12

OrgAbuseHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgAbusePhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@iana.org

OrgTecHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgTechName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgTechPhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgTechEmail: abuse@iana.org

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-10-06 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

Re:Capture it now, before its disappeared

[mi]

... not only against us, but also against the governments that want to abuse us.

Abuse us by funding research on the subjects of:

• 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

?

You sure do sound abused, kid. But not by (this) government...

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.

NSA funding != breach of ethics

[xPsi]

I'm not sure why this is considered controversial. I do personally think it is sort of interesting, but I'm not sure where the "real" story is. It would be like if someone who just discovered the internet posted "did you know that the suffix .org is meant to be for non-profit organizations but in reality anyone can use it?" Shocking! Must be a conspiracy. This strikes me as the same kind of thing. It is a bit of common trivia not generally known by people who don't write research grants. But its not a whistle-blower revelation regarding a large scale breach of ethics. Is it really surprising that academics who get NSA funding want to keep a little quiet about it? I can think of a lot of practical reasons this might be the case. What bugs me is that the article makes it sounds like chagrin is the motivator: they are ashamed of their funding source because academics are suppose to be free thinking anti-establishment types. But I think the reality is much simpler: academics have a spectrum of beliefs like everyone else and moreover are happy to get funding where they can get it. Although I may not agree with everything the NSA does, taking money from them in the form of formal research grants does not constitute a breach of ethics of any kind (as this wikileak thing implies). Besides, a research grant probably created this really cool kids page (its sort of psychotic if you think about it). Another interesting thing is that a huge amount of computing the NSA does has to do with linux-based security issues. Perhaps this whole story is just an NSA cover to get a mildly amusing NSA story on the front pages of slashdot. Come on, Dr. Malda and reveal your true funding sources.