Calm debate about CIA urged

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2918006

Let's start by dispelling the myth that the CIA has become a 'dysfunctional' and 'rogue' agency," McLaughlin said, calling such statements "way out of line."
snip...
McLaughlin also took issue with those who call the CIA "risk-averse," saying: "Tell it to the CIA officers who flew into hostile Afghanistan ahead of U.S. troops just 16 days after Sept. 11 and linked up with Afghan contacts . . . analysts located with American troops throughout Iraq . . . CIA officers living side by side with foreign partners in remote and dangerous areas elsewhere."

These guys are ticked off!!!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/24/2140209

Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that the CIA has been quietly investing in research programs to automatically monitor Internet chat rooms. In a two year agreement with the National Science Foundation, CIA officials were involved with the selection of recipients for research grants to develop automated chat room monitors. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute received $157,673 from the CIA and NSF for their proposal of 'a system to be deployed in the background of any chat room as a silent listener for eavesdropping ... The proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chat rooms without human intervention.' How soon until all IM conversations are monitored by Big Brother? The abstract of the proposal is available on the NFS website."

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/24/2140209

I predict that they will come to naught on the technology. I could setup an IRC server in an hour or two. With a DSL line and that, bingo. It would be up, do its do and be down, before they could sniff a packet. I would assure you that tactics like this are being used, because they are simple and make sense. Besides, there are IRC clients out there that encrypt, as well as bots that do the same thing, bots that can serve off the real "meat 'n taters" strong encrypted files. 128bit encryption and they will likely never break a file like that.

All in all, an announcement that will serve to do little but scare the kids on the #w4r3Z channel.

This is about monitoring us! or least the subset of us that does not believe that the govmint would ever snoop on us.

of the United States.