U.S. Army Seeks Help Watching The Internet

U.S. Army Seeks Help Watching The Internet

www.informationweek.com

The U.S. Army is looking for someone to watch over the Internet.

A contract solicitation posted a week ago says that the Army is looking for a contractor to keep an eye on the Internet for possible threats to U.S. interests and forces.

"The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest, and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains," the solicitation says.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Great - antipathy? So, what will happen if a blog or domain shows antipathy? Just another step against free spech - it seems, they want to do it now worldwide (officially) -/

www.informationweek.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Sounds like this ties into An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

This is a new thread posted early in the morning, for some of us. I am sure this thread is going to get a lot of attention.

I just want to say that I am sure this idea has the best of intentions. It is believed that sleepers cells within the US could communicate through secret conversations on the internet. Message boards could be a good place to communicate. With e-mails it would be easy to single somebody out. However if a message was communicated over a message board with thousands of people active such as this one it would be hard to track down who was intended to receive the message.

On the other hand we have a lot of people today writing things that could be interpreted as a threat to security. As time goes on the true meaning of the ideal could be stretched to harm those that were never intended to be harmed.

With these things in mind lets have a reasonable conversation because I'm sure many of you have other insights and ideas to add.

Originally posted by absente


Great - antipathy? So, what will happen if a blog or domain shows antipathy?

Just so everyone knows: from merriam-webster.com

an·tip·a·thy Listen to the pronunciation of antipathy
Pronunciation:
\an-ˈti-pə-thē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural an·tip·a·thies
Etymology:
Latin antipathia, from Greek antipatheia, from antipathēs of opposite feelings, from anti- + pathos experience — more at pathos
Date:
1600

1obsolete : opposition in feeling2: settled aversion or dislike : distaste 3: an object of aversion
synonyms see enmity

Get that? If you have dislike of how our government is going, the armed forces say you should be monitored.

Ok, the only people who think "message boards" or "chat rooms" or "internet games" (more on that later) will be the place to pass "terrorist plans" are absolute dipsheeps, who don't their rear from a hole in the ground. And I mean that literally, not as a metaphor.

I have an old college roommate who is a detective with a State Police Department. He received training at Quantico Virginia with the FBI on wire tapping procedures, methods, etc. Guess what they told him? "World of Warcraft is being used by terrorists to transmit messages!" When he told me this, I burst out laughing and said "By which terrorists? The dumbest ones on the f'in planet?" (In case you didn't know, EVERYTHING is logged on that game) I then proceeded to explain to him how REAL terrorists would set up an unbreakable communication system via the internet. (No, I won't post my scenario here).

Get this people... A REAL TERRORIST WON'T DO THE FOLLOWING:

1) Use regular e-mail. Regular e-mail (non encrypted) is sent in PLAIN TEXT over the internet. If you put something called a "packet sniffer" (which I've had to do internally to networks) on a network, you can read the e-mail as they come and go.

2) Use chat rooms. Almost all chat rooms have logs, and have had logs since the early 1990s.

3) Use PUBLIC web sites to disseminate information, plans, or communications.

4) Use "texting" to get messages across.

4) Use Public Key encryption (the kind you use when you log on to your bank). If you can put a sniffer between the two computers, you can decrypt everything that goes across between the two.

5) Use VoIP services from services like Skype or Yahoo. Despite what everyone (including the police/fbi/government) wants you to believe, when you use a service like that, "wiretaps" are easy to do. It's called "port replication". (That's an oversimplification, but every network engineer understood that shorthand and went "yep" while nodding, and taking another sip of morning coffee.)

I would use the old standby that's been around for thousands of years. I believe it's called something like single-key cyphers, only it would be expanded back into new technologies.

REAL TERRORISTS will not use non-encrypted ANYTHING on the internet. Nor will they use public/private key encryption. Even if the government is already using quantum computers (and I suspect they are), THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DECRYPT IT BEFORE THE PLAN COULD BE CARRIED OUT.

Heck, shortwave radio would be an even safer method. Intelligence Agencies all over the world are still using it. Or, how about this: encryption across short wave radio. (Just came up with that one!)

They are getting away with this because THE AVERAGE PERSON IS IGNORANT OF HOW THE INTERNET ACTUALLY WORKS.

This is scary. It's easy to see how this could lead to anyone who states that Dick Cheney is not a good person on the internet could eventually be labelled a "terrorist".

I have a funny little picture in my head,of a young new recruit,being given a gun and told to watch over the internets "if it moves,shoot it" "yessir"

sorry,as you were.

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Great post sir chancealot!

Get that? If you have dislike of how our government is going, the armed forces say you should be monitored.

Exactly that makes me worry about my "internet freedom" - Wasn't there a story about 2 years ago, when a NY blogger was arrested for criticizing Bush's administration?

I am the owner of some big Bulgarian internet sites - one of them, a weekly online news paper used to inform regular citizens about alternative news (my own small ATS) - of course, there is much dislike about the Bush administration, and other US relevant topics. Does that makes me a terrorist? Does that make my 13.000 subscribers terrorists?

It's funny - really. We are used to receive information about the US "shooting down" servers and sites, mostly "terrorist organizations" and "terrorist information sites" - but realize, this is not the same. Antipathy - Dislike - This is a whole step further to full control over the internet.

Just the beginning? Maybe. Maybe not. Imagine full government control over the internet - let's be honest - every year just ATS is spreading very important information worldwide. Imagine what it would be, if ATS is "officially closed by the government" - One site after another and at the end - Real "alternative" communication, news - all end's. Of course, this is the worst case scenario

-/

Originally posted by NuclearPaul
This is scary. It's easy to see how this could lead to anyone who states that Dick Cheney is not a good person on the internet could eventually be labelled a "terrorist".

Exactly and avatars like mine would be banned or persons who are using them would be what? Terrorists? Enemy of the state? Or would they be just "cut off" -

>> sorry dude, your IP address is blocked to access this site

Is that how they think these alleged terrorists go around communicationing with each other , in some disgruntled antipathic bemoaning manner . You can just imagine this cell of so called islamofascist terror unit with mayhem and destruction in mind emailing each other in sulky dissatisfaction , probably bemoaning the cost of gas or something . What a joke , no wonder they didnt catch those other alleged terrorists in a miami bar .

Seems like a good thread to, once again, post this information. DHS is actively pursuing research into the area of automated monitoring of internet communities, presumably with the intention of discovering hidden or potentially threatening user-to-user communication patterns. From the DHS Homeland Security Center for Dynamic Data Analysis, at Rutgers:

Projects Involving Analysis of Large, Dynamic Multigraphs:

1. Analysis of Large, Dynamic Multigraphs Arising from Blogs
2. Universal Information Graphs
3. Statistical and Graph-Theoretical Approaches to Time-Varying Multigraphs
4. Adding Semantics to and Interconnecting Semantic Graphs
5. Algorithms for Identifying Hidden Social Structures in Virtual Communities

Projects Involving Continuous, Distributed Monitoring of Dynamic, Heterogeneous Data:

1. Continuous Distributed Data Stream Monitoring
2. Message Filtering and Entity Resolution/Author Identification (machine learning)
3. Dynamic Similarity Search in Multi-Modal Data
4. Optimization and Learning
5. Privacy-Preserving Data Analysis

A little explanation of the technical terms. A 'graph' is an abstract model of data, consisting of 'nodes' and 'edges' connecting the nodes. Nodes and edges can have various classes and attributes, for example, we could represent each message forum user as a 'node', and then connect those nodes with 'edges' representing, perhaps, a 'replied to post' relationship. The graph could be expanded, adding each thread as a node, with edges between user and thread nodes indicating either authorship or click-through views. A graph is a generic data-structure, capable of generically representing a great many types of data, with relationships between data items. A 'multigraph' is simply a graph that can have multiple edge connections between the same two nodes.

A 'dynamic' multigraph is a graph that is updated real-time, with new data and connections being added, changing the graph topology without completely replacing it.

'Entity Resolution/Author Identification', in this context, probably refers to techniques for identifying authorship or idealogical/culture background via analysis of word choice, syntax, punctuation, spelling, etc., -- as well as more sophisticated techniques.

You can see that these technique, combined, could allow, for example, identification of covert groups of individuals posting in coordination, individuals 'seeking out' one another and establishing new communications groups, unusual patterns of small communications action followed by large response, etc.

It's all about keeping you safe!

Hmm, no further comments? Anyone have any speculation on how closely the Army would work with DHS, FBI, NSA, etc., with regards to sharing in any already-existing programs, or would they want to do their own thing, "The Army Way?".

Is this something that DIA would manage, or would it be branch-specific?

ANTIPATHY???
Well, there's plenty of it to go around. Those are going to be very busy people.

Damn it i cant wait for this administration to be gone!!!!

And then i ask myself, if Bush is really leaving when his term is over, why the heck does he persist with his paranoia??????? Shouldnt it be lessening by now???

There's something very wrong here.

Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with the Army checking out antipathetic attitudes towards their performance on the Internet -- after all, that's what public-relations research firms do all the time, for private corporations.

But, there's a danger when mixing that with mission-objectives like 'threat detection' -- we've seen what happens when the Pentagon mixes public relations efforts and policy advocacy, on the new 'media battlefield', and it isn't pretty (or legal).