-Caveat Lector-
Small Start-Up Helps CIA Mask Its Moves on Web
http://dowjones.work.com/index.asp?layout=story_news_wsjdoc_id=34680
Monday, February 12, 2001
By Neil King Jr., Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
How's this for a curious pairing? Stephen Hsu and his partners at SafeWeb
Inc. launch a Web site offering the utmost in Internet privacy -- and then
hook up with the notoriously intrusive Central Intelligence Agency.
The new alliance between the Oakland, Calif., entrepreneurs and the spooks
from Langley, Va., shows how serious the CIA is about improving its
spycraft. The agency two years ago set up its own venture-capital firm,
known as In-Q-Tel, to search out just the sort of innovations that SafeWeb
offers.
The CIA, in this case, wants to use a SafeWeb program to mask its own
movements on the Internet, so it can gather information incognito. SafeWeb
suggests that the CIA also might use its technology to allow its far-flung
agents and informants to communicate home, without the countries they are
spying on ever knowing.
What's puzzling is why a tiny, year-old start-up would want to link up with
an agency that is the nemesis of privacy buffs everywhere.
'I'm sure we'll take a hit from the 5% of our most paranoid customers,' says
Mr. Hsu, SafeWeb's 34-year-old co-founder and a theoretical physicist by
training. But the CIA connection, he says, is deliberately distant. SafeWeb
will provide the agency with customized software, but the CIA will have no
access to the company's Web computers or to the workings of its core
software, he insists.
And who better to test the power of its privacy software than the world's
top spies? 'If our technology can satisfy them,' Mr. Hsu says, 'it can
satisfy just about anyone.'
The technology is a clever piece of software called Triangle Boy that
SafeWeb plans to post free this month on the Web. The CIA, through In-Q-Tel,
is investing in a revved-up version of the software, which can bounce
digital traffic around the Web anonymously, as well as rights to an equity
stake in SafeWeb should the company go public. Neither side will disclose
financial details.
The CIA has been slow to mine the riches of the Internet for fear of
exposing its own vast computer network to viruses or hacker attacks. It also
worries that others will monitor its activities if it roams the Web without
proper disguise.
What SafeWeb offers is a chance to move about the Internet without leaving
any trace. Users simply go to the company's Web site (www.safeweb.com) and
type in the address of the actual site they are seeking. SafeWeb's site acts
as an intermediary; anyone monitoring the activity would see only the
traffic between the user's computer and SafeWeb -- and not the user's
ultimate destination. The site recorded more than one million unique visits
last month.
But what really caught the CIA's fancy was Triangle Boy, a software package
that can turn any personal computer into a surrogate Web server. The system
allows users to navigate to any number of innocuous PC addresses, and then
go to the actual Web site they are seeking -- without leaving a trace.
Triangle Boy works by forwarding the request for the desired Web site on to
SafeWeb's site, which then makes the connection. SafeWeb developed Triangle
Boy to deter companies or countries from blocking access to its site, as
Saudi Arabia did last November.
CIA specialists say their core interest in Triangle Boy is anonymous
Internet browsing. 'We want to operate anywhere on the Internet in a way
that no one knows the CIA is looking at them,' says a senior CIA official
with connections to the In-Q-Tel team.
But the possible uses go way beyond that. SafeWeb says the agency also could
use the technology as a secure way for its 'assets,' or contacts, to
communicate with CIA headquarters. The CIA also suggests that it may one day
build a global network made up of Triangle Boys and servers equipped with
SafeWeb-style software to communicate with employees and informants. CIA
Director George Tenet told the Senate last week that one of his chief
ambitions is 'to take modern Web-based technology and apply it to our
business relentlessly.'
The SafeWeb technology could prove just as handy in getting information
covertly into other countries. It was this application that originally
inspired Mr. Hsu to reach out to the CIA last summer. 'I imagined them
wanting to use Triangle Boy to get Voice of America or something like that
into countries where it was blocked,' he said.
Others suggest more devious possibilities. An application like Triangle Boy,
if scattered among hundreds of PCs, could be a way to cloak a multipronged '
cyber attack' on someone else's computer system. The CIA, along with the
Pentagon, has worked for years to perfect ways to electronically meddle with
other countries' banking systems or electricity grids, and Triangle Boy
could allow them to do it without the target ever knowing who was behind the
attack. ' It
