U.S. Funds Chat-Room Surveillance Study (1 Viewer)

[Schweddy]

Source=Yahoo News

TROY, N.Y. - [size=-1] Amid the torrent of jabber in Internet chat rooms — flirting by QTpie and BoogieBoy, arguments about politics and horror flicks — are terrorists plotting their next move?
[/size] [size=-1] The government certainly isn't discounting the possibility. It's taking the idea seriously enough to fund a yearlong study on chat room surveillance under an anti-terrorism program. [/size]

[size=-1]A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer science professor hopes to develop mathematical models that can uncover structure within the scattershot traffic of online public forums. [/size]

[size=-1] Chat rooms are the highly popular and freewheeling areas on the Internet where people with self-created nicknames discuss just about anything: teachers, Kafka, cute boys, politics, love, root canal. They are also places where malicious hackers have been known to trade software tools, stolen passwords and credit card numbers. The Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that 28 million Americans have visited Internet chat rooms.[/size]

Maybe they will find folks talking about debatepolitics.com.


Actually, the question at hand is privacy. In the full story it mentions watching instant messages between two private parties - all in the name of terror.
Are they going to hold EFnet or AOL accountable for the content of the chatroom?
I can smell there this is going and it stinks.
:damn

 

[LiberalFINGER]

I'm going to throw this in with other ideas such as faked moon-landings, multiple shooters, and tracking devices in our tooth fillings.

There is reference to both chat rooms and forums. For both media, I would suggest that the data is too overwhelming to be of any use to any intelligence gathering agency. A program like this one would not be cost effective on a grand scale, but might be usable when focused on chat rooms or forums that are a known hang-out for terrorists.

 

[CSA_TX]

The internet is not private. So claims of invasion of privacy are BS. Never has been, never will be.

 

[Mantrius]

Thank you secure IM clients :rock

 

[LiberalFINGER]

**Smacks Mantrius** :lol: