According to the 12 February Wall Street Journal, the CIA wants to surf
the Web anonymously. They're buying a package called Triangle Boy from
SafeWeb, though they're replacing the crypto with their own algorithms.
And through their venture capital subsidiary (In-Q-Tel), they're buying
rights to an equity stake in SafeWeb.
The article notes the irony of a privacy company linking up with the
CIA. Stephen Hsu, the co-founder, is quoted as saying "I'm sure we'll
take a hit from the 5% of our most paranoid customers." And some folks
are speculating that the CIA really wants to cloak cyberwar activities,
or they want to learn the flaws of the product so they can penetrate
anonymity. (Why not -- according to CNN, the NSA claims that Osama bin
Laden has better communications technology than we do....)
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
