The U.S. military is looking for a contractor to patrol cyberspace,
watching for warning signs of forthcoming terrorist attacks or other
hostile activity on the Web. “If someone wants to blow us up, we want
to know about it,” Robert Hembrook, the deputy intelligence chief of
the U.S. Army’s Fifth Signal Command in Mannheim, Germany, told United
Press International.

In a solicitation posted on the Web last week, the command said it was
looking for a contractor to provide “Internet awareness services” to
support “force protection” — the term of art for the security of U.S.
military installations and personnel.
“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,” says the solicitation.
Hembrook was tight-lipped about the proposal. “The more we talk about
it, the less effective it will be,” he said. “If we didn’t have to put
it out in public (to make the contract award), we wouldn’t have.”
He would not comment on the kinds of Internet sites the contractor
would be directed to look at but acknowledged it would “not (be) far
off” to assume violent Islamic extremists would be at the top of the
list.

The solicitation says the successful contractor will “analyze various
Web pages, chat rooms, blogs and other Internet domains to aggregate
and assess data of interest,” adding, “The contractor will prioritize
foreign-language domains that relate to specific areas of concern
… (and) will also identify new Internet domains” that might
relate to “specific local requirements” of the command.
Officials were keen to stress the contract covered only information
that could be found by anyone with a computer and Internet connection.
“We’re not interested in being Big Brother,” said LeAnne MacAllister,
chief spokeswoman for the command, which runs communications in Europe
for the U.S. Army and the military’s joint commands there.
“I would not characterize it as monitoring,” added Hembrook. “This is a
research tool gathering information that is already in the public
domain.”

Experts say Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida use the Web for
propaganda and fundraising purposes. Although the extent to which it is
employed in operational planning is less clear, most agree that
important information about targeting and tactics can be gleaned from
extremists’ public pronouncements. Hembrook said the main purpose of
the contract is to analyze “trends in information.” The contractor will
“help us find those needles in that haystack of information.”
The solicitor says the contractor’s team will include a “principal
cyber investigator,” a “locally specialized threat analyst” and a
“foreign-speaking analyst with cyber investigative skills,” as well as
a 24/7 watch team.
The contractor will produce weekly written reports, containing “raw
data and supporting analysis.” The addresses of the Web page sources
will be “captioned under alias to preserve access,” says the
solicitation. Experts have noted in the past that publishing the
addresses of some extremists’ sites has led to them being attacked or
moving. However, the contractor will “consider releasing specific (Web
page addresses) on an as-needed basis … if explicit threat
materials or imminent threat to personnel or facilities are
discovered.”
The contractor also will notify the command immediately “upon receipt
of any and all stated or implied threats that contain timing and/or
targeting information relating to personnel, facilities or activities,
and to specifically designated areas of concern.”

While declining to comment on the specific solicitation, Ben Venzke,
CEO of IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Va.-based company that monitors
Islamic extremist propaganda for clients including U.S. government
agencies, said it was “common” for the military or other agencies to
employ contractors “to support their own work on these issues.”
“What most people don’t get,” he said, “is that (each agency or entity)
has their own very specific requirements. … They are looking for
one type of thing in particular.”
Venzke explained that while an analyst for a big-city police department
might be looking at extremist Web sites for certain kinds of
information, their requirements would be different from those of
intelligence analysts looking for evidence of trends in extremist
targeting or ideology, which in turn would be different from those
concerned — like the Fifth Signal Command — with force protection.

“There is some overlap,” he said, “and you always have to work to
minimize that, but generally, there are so many different …
pieces you can look at … it’s not duplication.”