Report: Army To Spy On Soldiers' Email To Combat 'Internal Threats

"Big Army" is about to meet "Big Brother."

U.S. Soldiers' emails will be under cyber surveillance as part of a new Defense Department project to help detect potential “insider threats” from  traitors or terrorists operating inside the military, according to the Military Times.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is trying to building “a suite of algorithms that can detect multiple types of insider threats by analyzing massive amounts of data — including email, text messages and file transfers — for unusual activity,” according to a statement from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which is helping develop the system.

The impetus for the system comes in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the publication of the Wikileaks documents online. Two army servicemen, Major Nadal Hasan and Private Bradley Manning, faces charges for those incidents.

DARPA's website describes the project, officially known as the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales program, as “insider threat detection in which malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by a trusted individual are detected against a background of everyday network activity,” according to the agency’s website.

While DARPA officially recognizes the program, its personnel will not give additional information on its scope and possible further applications to the civilian world. A DARPA spokesman told Military Times he was:

"Unable to provide further information about the project, to include whether the tracking will be limited to official government computers; when such monitoring could begin; or how many troops might be monitored during the development phase, which is slated to take two years."

The program will also track soldiers' downloads and keystrokes to create a list for of necessary "further investigations."

Some military experts believe threats inside the Department of Defense from traitors, terrorists, and saboteurs are on the rise.

(h/t Military Times)