Surveillance, Analysis and Modeling of Chatroom Communities
NSF Org DMS
Latest Amendment Date September 7, 2004
Award Number 0442154
Award Instrument Standard Grant
Program Manager Hans G. Kaper
DMS DIVISION OF MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
MPS DIRECT FOR MATHEMATICAL & PHYSICAL SCIEN
Start Date January 1, 2005
Expires December 31, 2005 (Estimated)
Expected Total Amount $ (Estimated)
Investigator Bulent Yener yener@cs.rpi.edu (Principal Investigator current)
Mukkai S. Krishnamoorthy (Co-Principal Investigator current)
Sponsor Rensselaer Polytech Inst
110 8th Street
Troy, NY 121803522 518/276-6000
NSF Program 7276 APPROACHES TO COMBAT TERRORISM
Field Application 0000099 Other Applications NEC
Program Reference Code 0000,7276,9237,OTHR,
Abstract
The aim of this proposal is to develop new techniques for information gathering, analysis and modeling of chatroom communications. First, the investigator and his colleague consider graph-less models to capture the structure of chatroom communications. In particular, the investigators study how to develop a multidimensional singular value decomposition approach for component analysis of chatroom communication data. Second, the investigators develop new visualisation techniques to display the structural information found in the first step.
Internet chatrooms provide an interactive and public forum of communication for participants with diverse objectives. Two properties of chatrooms make them particularly vulnerable for exploitation by malicious parties. First, the real identities of the participants are decoupled from their chatroom nicknames. Second, multiple threads of communication can co-exist concurrently. Although human-monitoring of each chatroom to determine “who-is-chatting-with-whom” is possible, it is very time consuming, hence not scalable. Thus, it is very easy to conceal malicious behavior in Internet chatrooms and use them for covert communications (e.g., adversary using a teenager chatroom to plan a terrorist act). This project aims at a fully automated surveillance system for data collection and analysis in Internet chatrooms to discover hidden groups. The surveillance is done in the form of statistical profiling for a particular chatter, a group of chatters, or for the entire chatroom. The statistical profiles are used to devise algorithms to determine chatters and their partners and answer to queries including (i) “in which chatrooms topic A is discussed”, (ii) “who is chatting about topic A in chatroom X”, (iii) “is topic A is a hot one in chatroom X” etc. Thus, the proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chatrooms without human intervention.
This award is supported jointly by the NSF and the Intelligence Community. The Approaches to Terrorism program in the Directorate for Mathematics and Physical Sciences supports new concepts in basic research and workforce development with the potential to contribute to national security.
Big Brother is really working overtime these days on all fronts!
No one likes to be spyed on, but what would you think if it could prevent something from happening like the 9/11 attacks. Especially when chat rooms are all BS anyway, who cares, but the terrorists and crooks?
We live in a different age now. It’s a complicated world out there, and we need to be on guard, like it or not. So the personal freedom thing really isn’t much of an option anymore, unless you want to go live on your own island somewhere, if you have the means. If not, you live as you need to, and whether or not you like it, that isn’t an important issue. It’s just a fact of life in modern society.
I was always told that Americans prized their “freedoms” above everything, but in the real world, all it takes is a little bit of fear and they’re willing to give up all their freedoms except the right to keep and bear assault rifles.
The catch 22 of democracy. When you try and protect freedom by taking away freedom. Democracy is a dangerous political system. People with freedom run the risk of getting hurt. That’s the cost of freedom. The more laws and restrictions the government makes to protect us, the more criminals and enemies the government makes.
Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Personal freedom is still very much an issue. Yes, in this time we need to take a hard look at things and decide just what we are willing to give up, but can’t do it out of fear and panic. That way we, the people, can make educated and informed decisions about what risks we are willing to take and what liberties we are willing to give up.
That being said, I personally don’t think it’s the government’s business what books I choose to read, websites I choose to look at, etc. Those are freedoms that I don’t want to give up.
Also, take a look at Israel. That is a very closely monitored society, with closed borders and many government folks walking around with automatic weapons, and look at all the trouble they still have.
For me, I want the U.S. to be a more cautious place, without giving up all personal freedom.
I’ve got no complaint with the content of the proposal, nor it being selected for funding. I don’t think this is the sort of thing NSF should be funding, though. It sounds much more up DARPA’s alley. MPS (the mathematics and physical sciences division of NSF, who are funding the project we’re discussing) is really hurting financially, and I think they really ought to be sticking to more fundamental science that isn’t funded by anyone else.
