US Contractors Profiled 'Cuban Twitter' Responses

By DESMOND BUTLER and ALBERTO ARCE Associated Press

Paula Cambronero was studying public relations at a Costa Rican college when she landed her first real job working for a U.S. government contractor. But it wasn't to write press releases.

As part of a program shrouded in secrecy to build a "Cuban Twitter" on the Communist-governed island, Cambronero profiled Cuban cellphone users, categorizing them as "pro-revolution," ''apolitical" or "anti-revolutionary."

The social media network, paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development, sought to undermine the Cuban government through cellphone text messaging to get around the island's Internet restrictions, The Associated Press detailed in an investigation published in early April.

The plan for the bare-bones service, known as ZunZuneo, was to build a subscriber base slowly through innocuous news messages, then when it reached a critical mass of users, introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" to "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society," according to documents obtained by the AP.

Following the AP's report, USAID chief Rajiv Shah told a U.S. Senate panel that the program was not intended to influence Cuban politics. But that doesn't square with Cambronero's work, first as an intern then as a contracted employee, as detailed in the documents.

Cambronero's job was to test the political waters before the program was launched. The contractor asked her to sign a security protocol that required encrypted communications with other staff and emails sent from a domain name "not publicly linked" to the contractor. It cautioned that she would handle a "considerable amount of sensitive information that must be safeguarded to protect critical operations of the Project."

USAID and its contractors went to great lengths to hide the U.S. government's role in ZunZuneo, including establishing a front company in the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail.

Cambronero, who studied at the University of Costa Rica, said enthusiastically in a report on her work that it was "my first job experience with an established schedule."

Nevertheless, she had considerable responsibility, building out a database about Cuban mobile phone users, including gender, age, "receptiveness" and "political tendencies" that USAID believed could help bolster its Cuba programs. The Cubans responding to the text messages were not aware the U.S. government was gathering data on them.

Cambronero did not respond to requests for comment. The State Department had no comment Wednesday.

The political content of the social networking program is sensitive because the Obama administration has denied it involved covert action. The U.S. National Security Act defines "covert" as government activities aimed at influencing political conditions abroad "where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." The law requires the president to approve covert activities.

Costa Rica's government has asked Washington to explain why it ran such a program from Costa Rican territory. Carlos Roverssi, the minister of communications, said Wednesday that it will be up to the country's recently elected government to deal with the matter once the U.S. responds.

"It seems to me that the issue is now public and the next government should follow up on the issue, without a doubt," he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/usaid-contractors-profiled-cuban-twitter-users-23532155