Ask Slashdot: What's the Real NSA Like?

Gary D. Young submitted this interesting question for you all: "So, you've seen the movies where the NSA comes in with the CIA and the FBI, guns blazing, in all the cloak and dagger movies and stories. But what does the organization actually do? Well, for those of us who have actually taken interest and even visited their headquarters in DC, another story is available." Interested in discussing the facts behind the hype? Click below.

"The National Security Agency, is actually an organization of geeks and nerds parallel to the role of Q in James Bond. They arm the government (CIA, the spy agency; FBI the government police, and the military) with cryptographic systems to protect the missions of those other organizations, and they also have the job of trying to break the cryptographic systems that might be in place to prevent the completion of those missions. You can see this evidenced in their behavior of attempting to block the export of "strong cryptosystems", because that merely makes their job harder.

In all honesty, you will find that the charter for the NSA has a Top Secret clearance level, so we may not actually know the true ajenda of the group, but since they are solely populated by scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, the stories of their involvement in Danger and Daring Do are greatly exaggerated. I would doubt that many of them have ever held a gun before.

So in my not so humble, but somewhat educated, opinion, the popular view of the NSA is fairly inaccurate, and confusingly to me, they seem uninterested in correcting that view.

Comments welcome. But keep in mind that these are the opinions of one person based on contact through job fairs, interviews, and cryptographic history articles. "

So what image do you think represents the real NSA? Are they closer to the Spooks from Hollywood, or are they just normal people like you and me?

Re:NSA ... One more thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an interesting point. It is generally believed that multiple encryptions where the keys are totally independent of one another do not necessarily improve security but do not decrease security.

There are properties of some functions that make multiple encryptions bad. Take the rot13 "encryption" for instance. Is it more secure to encrypt your secret message twice with rot13 than just once with rot13? As you probably know, "encrypting" twice with rot13 gives you your original message. So that wouldn't be very secure :)

There are other bad things that can happen. For instance in DES, if you encrypt a message with key A, then encrypt with key B, who is to say that the attacker has to find key B and key A? Maybe there is a key C that can undo what key A and key B did. Luckily for us, DES has the properties that this sort of thing doesn't happen. So encrypting twice with independent keys does increase your security (though not as much as twice the original security).

I was just reading newsgroups tonight and saw that the Handbook for Applied Cryptography is now 100% online so you can read about all this stuff at http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ although it is rather dense mathematically. Section 7.2.3 has some good info on multiple encryptions. Somewhere in Chapter 10 is the information about how UNIX passwords are actually encrypted and the stuff I was talking about regarding how UNIX uses multiple rounds of DES (actually it looks like it does 25 rounds of DES instead of the 16 I said earlier) and it has some tables showing how long it would take a generic computer to brute-force them.

Why does the NSA have such a big budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA has an estimated budget about 4 times as big as the CIA. It is *the* biggest spy agency in the world. The reason is ECHELON. They are operating a big network of 'snooping' facilities, which has access to an estimated 99% of international and local telecommunications, *of the whole planet*. They are not recording everything and at once, but they have the capability to filter out certain keywords from *all* of the traffic (including all packets at key internet routers in Germany, US, UK, Australia, etc. Including sattelites, undersea cables, microwave transmissions, etc.). They also are 'tagging' 'interesting people', whose communications (in and outgoing) get recorded and analyzed even if otherwise they would not get filtered out by keyword.

Although the NSA by law is forbidden to spy on it's own citizens (and politicians), the US has secret laws with eg. Great Britain (USUK treaty, it's a law, you must not break it but you are not allowed to read it, interesting), which enables them to 'switch spies and facilities'. Ie. NSA agents go to british spy facilities, british agents go the NSA headquarters. No, the NSA is not spying on US citizens, they are spying on british citizens. No, the MI6 (the british equivalent of the NSA, MI5 is the equivalent of the CIA) is not spying on british citizens, they are spying on US citizens. And resulting information then is traded trough inofficial channels, by top agency officials - usually behind the back of the administration. You can be pretty sure that all Congressmen in the US are tagged. (by of course british-operated computers). Such a huge snooping network and analyzing capacity of course costs tens of billions of dollars per year.

Big spy agencies like the NSA also try to 'survive administrations and legislations', ie. top NSA officials are very much interested in younger Bush's opinion about encryption and his opinion about the NSA's future budgets. Or just the small information that a key congressional comittee member's daughter has a drug problem, and the well-trained agents visit this congressman and talk about the absolute need to snoop on the Cali Drug Cartell's mobile phones. (which of course is not a bad goal, but not the NSA's true priority either, unfortunately.)

The NSA also tries to 'make itself useful' by doing industrial espionage against the EU. The resulting information then is distributed through unofficial 'old NSA boys' network. There are documented cases of big US defense companies (eg. McDonalds Douglas) suddenly underbidding EU competitors by 5% or so in asian tenders.

This whole issue is a typical case of how uncontrolled power leads to inner corruption. The NSA cannot be investigated by the Congress, only by the National Security Comittee - which again is part of the old boys network. Is the NSA spying on ordinary citizens? Yes and no. Yes because the NSA^H^H^HMI6 does filter even ordinary US citizens, but usually they are not interested in them. Oh and this of course is unconstitutional - but not even Supreme Court Judges have access to NSA documents, interesting?

So no, the NSA is not MIB, they are more like the Matrix.

Re:But I like conspiracies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, just perhaps, there hasn't been a lot of debate in 30 years over real economics. The Fed (and the non-Marxoid economists) are arguing over minor points. Then someone like Carter comes along, having itellectually prostituted himself to liberal ideology for so long that he can no longer do basic math, and wrecks the economy by doing things that everyone but the liberals assure him will wreck the economy. So the Fed fixes it, and knows that it will cost him the election. This doesn't make the Fed political, unless you feel that being anti-US economy is "an opinion" instead of an act of war.

School of the Americas

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to your point:

The above school has trained dictators and right wing militias in South America, Indonesia, etc. for decades (including famous graduates as Noreiga). A recent show on PBS focused on the discovery of training manuals that described in detail how to carry out torture and execution of prisoners.

Funnily enough, the School of the Americas said they had been produced by "mistake" in a "translation error". They've added a few voluntary classes in democracy and human rights in response to churches demanding they a shut down.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/015.html

Your tax dollars at work. :)

Let me clear the (brain)fog

[Anonymous Coward]

The Disc. Channel prog was good. It didn't pull punches when showing what they had. They said the computer (that could do the crack in under a second) was called a "Thinking Machine" it's actually a CM-5 (connection machine 5) made by Thinking Machines, Inc. Lotsa places have CM-5s, they're one of the most popular production supercomputers. Univ's like U. of Illinois (NCSA) and others have them availible to students.

They showed in the video a Cray T90-class supercomputer. Another popular one. These are nice systems (as far as supercomps go. they're just nice, not great.)

I assume that the NSA also has several of Cray's flagship models - the T3E-1200. Check out www.top500.org [top500.org] to see where I get my assumptions. The list is here [top500.org].

The NSA has an affinity for very fast computers. They can use them to brute force just about anything.

Private companies have think tanks for coming up with math algorithms. Wolfram Research [wolfram.com] has some of them, they use them in Mathematica (a program). Mathematica has many secret algorithms for searching for prime stuff (numbers, factors, etc.).

There are other networks the NSA (presumably) uses to spy on people. One of them is rather obscure. Ask yourself this... "GPS uses like 24 satellites in polar orbit to cover the earth with a signal to tell you where you are. These are military (i.e. NSA) satelliites. They have the whole satellite to themselves. These are not little laptops in the sky - they're supercomputers. So what else do they put on the (several schoolbus sized) things???". Answer: Lots of goodies to make their jobs fun. Of course all of the things are top secret (even how GPS works). One of the things is a microwave camera. Ever use a cellphone in a building? Those signals go right through the walls (like they're not even there.) So does the light from these cameras. Ever had an x-ray done? You can see your bones. The freq. range they use is somewhere in between, so they can take pictures through walls, but get more than just bones on the "film". This is all well and good, but we can do better. Take three or more of these cameras and aim them at the same thing... What do you get? A 3-D image of an entire building whose contents show up through the walls.

Next time you're on the crapper, hemroids flairing, wave hi to the sky - we're watching.

Re:A few words on the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for several years with a somewhat high clearance level at NSA at the end of the seventies. The NSA's primary tasking is for the gathering of SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence). This is the interception of, decoding and analysis of communications of every conceivable type.

Cloak and dagger type stuff is typically left to the CIA or the intelligence groups of the military. My estimation (based on my experiences - primarily with information storage and retrieval systems) is that the technology resources available to them (much of it developed in house) is 5 to 10 years ahead of what you can find readily available in commercial markets.

What RAND is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just speaking with a good friend about this... RAND is an independent corporation set up in Santa Monica whose purpose was to consult with the Air Force on strategy and technology development. They were the original "think-tank". They maintain close ties with the government, and many RAND experts will move into government jobs and vice versa. This especially goes for their specialists in areas like Russian Affairs and Weapons development. It is, in all intents and purposes, like an extension of a government agency in that they maintain top level security clearances and have close interaction with most aspects of Defense in government.
As an example of the information level they have access to, it was a RAND Corporation employee who leaked the famous "Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times during the Vietnam War. Needless to say, both he and his superiors were immediately fired. - A.C.

Paranoia and what you really need to worry about..

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt very much that americans need to be paranoid about an organization that will accept your resume for employment. Think for a moment about the agencies that are not publicly promoted, about the agencies that don't 'accept resumes'. If I was american I would see the NSA as a the goverments little PR move to let it's citizens know that they are providing some means of security, when in reality what the NSA does is mostly commercial and scientific in nature. While I hope this won't spark the constant canadian/american bashing or the freakin' south park 'hate canada' bull.. think for a moment about Canadian Intellegence.. reading that.. you are probably laughing, along with most canadian citizens.. haha.. we have no need for intelligence in this country! - but, fact is, the intelligence game is alive and well in Canada, our government just doesn't make it known, or feel the need to promote itself to citizens. As soon as canadian citizens start acting like americans, and becoming all paranoid and asking 'what is our country doing to protect us?' you can bet that a cutesy little organisation will be spawned (probably from within the real intellegence organizations) and given a nice little acronym (probably CSA) and made public. Did you know that the majority of sub surface and sub marine scanning equipment present in most U.S. military aircraft, is a product of canadian intelligence? An *OLD* product that the US still uses today and hasn't been able to improve upon? ..interesting food for thought. [e-mail]

Public knowledge... if you know where to look

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Congressional report on the full House (funny the way it is called the "Committee of the whole"...) session of May 13th (INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2000 (House of Representatives - May 13, 1999). Sorry, no URL, the Congressional Record is not bookmarkable, but you can search on the title at Thomas [loc.gov].

Dry reading, I know, but the great journalist I. F. Stone uncovered not a few cases of government misdoings that were out there for anyone to see, purloined-letter style, in the Congressional Record.

This really has to be seen to be believed. It starts stolidly enough, and get entertaining as it goes on. Major Owens just barely stops short of calling the CIA the Central Stupidity Agency... There is also an interesting part about the US' involvement in the Pinochet coup in Chile

Here is a scrunchy excerpt of Major Owen's intervention, for your enjoyment. He is protesting the fact that the size of the US intelligence budget is itself classified, and the only way a member of congress can learn the exact figure is to sign an oath, which then gags him/her about speaking about it in specifics.

Mr. Chairman, I think the last speaker was correct when he said we need to revamp the CIA. I think what the Sanders amendment says is that revamping should not involve additional money.

The CIA budget is estimated to be somewhere around $30 billion. We are only spending about $23 billion on elementary and secondary education. It is important that it be revamped. And I am not sure that the intelligence community that exists now is capable of revamping it. We need an independent commission of some kind to revamp the CIA. It needs to be improved. It needs to have accountability. The long history of blunders in the last 10 years are such that it is obviously a defunct, incompetent, decaying agency. Something needs to happen.

I am not sure the President is in charge, either. The President's first choice for CIA Director was not accepted by the intelligence community. The intelligence community protects this incompetence.

Our history with respect to Haiti was that the CIA was determined to get the duly-elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand-Aristide. They did everything they could to smear him. All kinds of false things were generated out of the CIA. When they were later proven to be untrue, nobody later apologized, nobody was held accountable.

In one of the major diplomatic moves made by the envoy to Haiti, where we had a delegation going in with Canadian police and a number of other things to start a process of peace in Haiti, there was a big demonstration on the docks in Haiti which turned all that around and threatened the U.S. Embassy personnel with gunshots; and it turned out that that demonstration was financed by the CIA. Emmanuel Constanz, the head of the organization that staged the violent demonstration was on the payroll of the CIA.

We cannot fully get the story of all the things Emmanuel Constanz had going with the CIA because they refuse to give us the records. They will not let the nation of Haiti try Emmanuel Constanz for the crimes that he has committed.

Then there is the Aldrich Ames affair, where the man in charge of the Russian spy operation managing our assets was on the payroll of the Soviet Union. He was on the payroll of the Soviet Union, and he exposed those assets. At least 10 of the people who were working for this nation were executed as a result of Aldrich Ames, the guy who was in charge at the CIA, having sold them out for quite a number of millions of dollars.

And now we have the blunder at the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. It is not funny at all. It is not humorous at all to me. I heard some Members in the elevator say, `Do you want to establish a special map fund for the CIA?' I do not think this is funny at all. These people have life-and-death power over large numbers of people, and to talk about a mapping error which could have been corrected by a tourist map, a mapping area that was reinforced by somebody on the ground. They said they had assets on the ground. Was the asset on the ground drunk? What kind of operation is this?

And when are we, as American people first of all, going to get to see what the budget is? But more important than that, an independent commission to revamp it? And before that happens, there should not be a single additional penny spent. Throwing money at the CIA is certainly not going to solve the problem. And money is not the problem. They have far more than they need right now.

My colleagues will recall several years ago that the CIA accountants lost $4 billion in their budget. They could not find out where $4 billion had gone. They just could not. We know it was not spent. They lost it and kept applying for, of course, new funds every year . And we never got a full explanation as to what happened to lose $4 billion in the budget of the CIA.

So we very much need to have a better accounting of this life-and-death powerful agency. The incompetence is deadly. The incompetence of the CIA is deadly. The incompetence of the CIA is such that it destroys the foreign policies of the United States.

Re:Hollywood got it right (once, at least)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sneakers got it right? Are you kidding? I find it hard to believe that a slashdot reader found the movie accurate. They did dial in using a 300-baud acoustic coupler modem and had full screen realtime graphics, right? And oh yeah, mathematics that can easily break American codes are worthless on Russian codes because they use different numbers. Uh huh. Sneakers is a fun little movie, but it has little of accuracy in it. People with Security Clearances are routinely given instructions to "neither confirm nor deny". If you always get the same answer to your question, you can't tell by the response if they hit close to the mark or were missing by miles. For the record, my best friend works for the NSA now and has for many years. He and his co-workers had "Sneakers" parties where they all went together to watch it. He said they laughed their butts off. And yes, he was told not to discuss it with the media (naturally. Information should come from the top, not some low level employee).

Re:Ollie North & math majors.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm too damned lazy to register; forgive the anonymous cowardice here. I seem to recall that the NSA has something like 400 phds in math, easily the largest employer of math phds in the country. As it happens, there are about 500 - 600 US citizens a year who earn a phd in math in this country (1200 phds a year counting foreign nationals), the majority of which end up in universities. The NSA keeps a very low profile in the public, but somewhat higher profile in the math world; they put intriguing recruitment advertisements in various math publications. At the national math convention a couple of years ago, they were handing out NSA refrigerator magnets at their exhibit booth.

Re:NSA not so evil as you think maybe

[Kirth]

They are strictly forbidden from intercepting any communication involving at least one "US person" (which include all US citizens and any private citizen within the US regardless of nationality) and this is honored, at least in my experience. This, by the way, is in accordance with an Executive Order signed by none other than Richard M. Nixon. They are strictly forbidden from intercepting any communication involving at least one "US person" (which include all US citizens and any private citizen within the US regardless of nationality) and this is honored, at least in my experience. This, by the way, is in accordance with an Executive Order signed by none other than Richard M. Nixon.

As a European citizen I sure think this is funny. So my communication gets intercepted and my trade secrets are sold to US companies.

Bastards.

Kirth

Re:My Buddy and the NSA

[drwiii]

I do know that if you live in Maryland, you most likely know at least 5 people who work for the NSA in some way.

This is true.

Re:Language oddities

[Alex Belits]

I suppose that one reason that capitalized neologisms might have become popular is that they would be clearly distinguished from ordinary typographical errors when embedded in ordinary speech.

Then it's still something unique. A lot of areas have odd-looking jargon, and none of them did this. There was time in Russian history when fad of making all kinds multiple-words abbreviations was very widespread (and it was kept for a long time in organizations names) yet only normal capitalization (or none) was used with those names. There is one exception -- "GULAG" was always all caps even though only first two of three words were reduced to one letter. Possibly because all related organizations had "normal" acronyms.

Re:People who don't know where to stop

[Alex Belits]

So, I guess I'm asking, perhaps there is actually a use to all this? You set up a paranoid unpleasant situation, give people the chance to screw each other over, and then as the arbiter (you the government) have psychological control over your subverted citizens.

It works well when government always acts as one force, and people can be easily threatened by minor embarrassing things (USSR, East Germany, etc.). While I don't consider US government as a whole disinterested in such things, running after people with loads of minor dirt looks almost as dumb as asking every presidential candidate questions about marijuana use in his distant past. OTOH, blatant misuse of such information if leaked or received by "co-spying" on unencrypted links (for everything from fraud and theft of trade secrets to "marketing research") is a real threat.

They/we ARE wierd!

[rodent]

After working closely with many folks in the military intel circles (played with nukes) I must say that "normal" people would view them with a raised eye. Most folks in the intel and nuke fields are wierd beyond belief and most "normal" people would die if they saw some of the things we did.

Personally, I used to wear bright red suspenders with CCCP and a hammer & scicle & star on them under my BDU's. I always had fun running around without the blouse on! :)

Re:Some interesting info

[Analog]

Identical twins have similar faces but different fingerprints. How can face recognition be more accurate than fingerprinting?

Beats the hell outta me. I'm just parroting what the program I saw about it said. ;)

Re:Some interesting info

[Analog]

They are interpeters basically. And he was in the Air Force. He simply received his orders from the NSA.

The thing I saw about it didn't say what he did, just that he worked for NSA. They did say that he was 'posing' as an Air Force member; shows what happens when you trust the media to put accuracy above sensationalism.

Re:Some interesting info

[Analog]

Don't know what program it was (have there been many? Wouldn't think so). Caught it while surfing. My memory may be faulty; if so, my bad. As I've obviously offended you, my apologies. Thanks for putting the record straight.

A job interview with the NSA

[dmiller]

There is one person's account of a job interview with the NSA available online [tbtf.com].

IIRC Phrack [phrack.org] published the NSA security manual a few years back.

Since we talking conspiracies...

[Stephen "The Carp" C]

Heres a good one...
early 1980s Reagan Becomes president with Bush
at his side as VP. Who is Bush? Ex head of the
CIA.
What do they do? Turn up the heat on the drug war
even more. Make prices of drugs like cocaine
go up. What does the CIA do? They start selling
crack in poor neiborhoods. Coincidence? I think
not.
As for the NSA...im not sure what to make of them.
they keep secret and I don't like that. Government
shouldn't be allowed to keep secrets.

not at war

[Stephen "The Carp" C]

Ok yes...secrets need to be kept from the enemy
during a hot war. True.

However the government should NOT be able to
make documents secret from its people.

So barring troop movements and wartime weapons
development...the government should have NO
secrets. The people should know EVERYTHING about
the killing of JFK that the gov does...
the CIA should not have been allowed to destroy
most of the MKULTRA documents.
No secrets at all. very simple. Hell I was GLAD
when China stole our nuclear secrets. I don't
trust our government with nukes any more then
I trust the chinese, at least if we both have
the same technology, there is a better chance
we wont use them.
of course what do I know?
I think the Army should ONLY be applied when
we NEED to engage in total warfare and that
advancing the political agendas of a
meglamaniac or two is not a valid use of an army
(however...thats all we have done with the army
since WWII)

Re:agreed

[Zachary Kessin]

The question is not can system X be cracked. It should be how much money and time does it take to crack X. I mean if the NSA can crack my email
but it will take a computer that costs 100K 60 days to do it I don't much care. The probably will have more important things to use that computer on.

Oh and there is No Such Angency.

Can they break PGP?

[AxelBoldt]

I'm pretty convinced that they can't break the RSA public key system. But you don't need to break RSA to break PGP. The weak spot of PGP is the random number generator (PGP uses RSA only to transmit a randomly generated key which is then used by both parties for the rest of the communication). If you can predict the distribution of numbers the generator produces, you can break PGP without any need to factor large integers.

As far as I know, there is no decent random number generator on Windows. Linux has a good one though. I have no idea whether it is good enough. You could try to find out by sending a Linux-PGP encrypted death threat to the president...

--

Re:nsa people

[osu-neko]

What no one has bothered asking is why, with so much money and so many smart people, they fuck-up so regularly? No, this is not a troll. Here's a shortlist of incidents where a little real intelligence would have gone a long ways...

Castro taking over Cuba

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait

It took us quite some time to build up the necessary forces to liberate Kuwait. Give this, what would be the value of knowing it was going to occur a day or two earlier than we did? For that matter, what makes you think we didn't know ahead of time? The fact that the NSA didn't give a press conference about it two days before it happened? The NSA is not a public information service. The fact that the world at large did not know ahead of time that is was going to happen is not evidence that the NSA didn't tell a select few people that it was going to happen ahead of time.

The India/Pakistani nuclear tests

Again, why in the world do you believe the NSA did not inform certain people of this before it happened? And for that matter, what value is this intelligence? Were we supposed to bomb India or Pakistan to prevent the tests from occuring or something? It just makes no sense to consider this a "failure" on anybody's part.

North Korean Missile tests ("3 stages?" oops)

The location of Chinese embassies

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the job the NSA does or not.

and I'm sure others can supply more examples.

Actually, anyone who claims to be able to supply examples is full of shit. If you don't work for the NSA (and even for most who do), you don't know enough about their involvement in any of these affairs or any others for that matter to know whether any perceived failures, if there were any, where the fault of the NSA or not.

Give me just one good example where intelligence gathered by the NSA has done the world any substantial good.

If I could do that, it would be a failure on the NSA's part. Again, the NSA is a secret intelligence agency, not a public information service. Anytime I can tell you anything about what the NSA does, it's a failure on the NSA's part.

--

Re:Hollywood Accurate? HA! ...

[osu-neko]

Actually, there's very little in the way of atmosphere 100 miles up. The space shuttle regularly orbits the Earth for a week or so at that altitude.

--

Brute-forcing UNIX passwords

[acb]

Aside: I heard a while ago that some enterprising cracker was selling CD-ROMs containing a big sorted hash table, mapping all possible encrypted UNIX passwords to valid plaintext, and thus reducing the cracking operation to a table lookup.
Has anybody else heard anything about this? (It certainly sounds possible.)

Re:Hollywood Accurate? HA! ...

[Skim123]

RAND was a government-sponsored research lab, set up by the air force, if I'm not mistaken, in the 1950's or 60's to do research.

According to the Simpson's, the RAND company is responsible for turning Springfield's adults into reverse vampire zombies.

Re:My grandfather always said...

[cpt kangarooski]

if one visits Fort Meade, Maryland, they will note the large geodesic bubbles on the tops of buildings; apparently the purpose is to obscure the directions their satellite dishes point, for obvious reasons

They're also handy to keep crap from accumulating in the dish. Lots of people use em.

Re:a small view from the inside

[Darchmare]

NOTE: The previous message was paid for in full by the NSAPRF (NSA Public Relations Fund).

We're on your side. Really.

:>

Sorry, couldn' resist.

- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

Re:I dunno, but...

[Darchmare]

Actually, I used to work for the government (well, kind of - I worked at one of the national labs that HASN'T been in the news due to leaks to the Chinese government).

Dress codes were pretty much non-existant after men started actually coming in dresses. We computer techs could wear anything halfway appropriate, but the suits had to wear, well, suits (although I'm not sure that was mandated).

Never had any tardiness policies that I know of. Flex time was actually pretty nice. Work five 8 hour days, four 10 hour days, whatever.

Zero mobility? Admittedly not as good as I'd have liked it to be, but not really as bad as you'd think. I'd agree somewhat with this - it's not as good as it should be (or rather, was misplaced).

Paperwork sucks, and there was a decent amount of that - but it wasn't quite as bad as you make it out to be. Then again I was a Mac tech, so we were phasing out floppies anyhow. :>

Mindless beureaucrats? We had a few - believe it or not, though, I actually liked my manager. Go figure.

As for pay, well, let's just say I'm working in the private sector now. :>

The upshot - if you can get in at a good level, the benefits and such as great - it's the kind of place you want to retire in. If you're looking for an incredibly exciting job, stock options, whatever then look elsewhere. Stability is the key - although it does keep some 'dead weight' around, you don't have the problems with layoffs and such. Great if you're raising a family (I'm not).

It's a matter of priorities, really. Then again, my old job could have been entirely different than someone else's. The government is a big place, and my place of employment wasn't really strictly government.


- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

Re:NSA

[Darchmare]

Sadly, what you say about Hanford is correct. There appears to be a great deal more incidents of cancer around here than should be.

Of course, that doesn't even mention the liquid waste that is currently found to be leaking toward the Columbia river (follow it on a map and you'll see that it leads directly to Portland Oregon).

On the plus side, the industry here has gone from Nuclear power to cleanup. These things aren't really kept secrets any more.


- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

Re:NSA

[rawlink]

The math major is right, you are wrong.

There are 8 Slots.
[x][x][x][x][x][x][x][x]

That would mean [70][70][70][70][70][70][70][70]. Also read as 70*70*70*70*70*70*70*70, also read as 70^8.

You know kind of like the way you count in decimal. 10000 = 10^4 = 10*10*10*10

Go back to remedial math.

Re:Military Support of the NSA

[paul.dunne]

You were cruising around in a war zone, and you got shot at? Heavens, who would have thought it? Friendly fire -- it happens. Perhaps you think the Brits killed by the USAF during the Iraq affair should "not forget, and not forgive"? Sounds like a nice recipe for international chaos. What do you think the USA should do about this? Bomb Tel Aviv? /. readers should note that the link fair-mindedly included on the ussliberty.org page comprehensively demolishes any case for a deliberate Israeli attack -- here [us-israel.org].

Re:Military Support of the NSA

[paul.dunne]

You don't give any motivation for the Israelis to attack the ship; and merely *assert* that the evidence is overwhelming. The evidence presented on the website, however, is circumstantial at best. I don't tar everyone who disagrees with me as an anti-Semite; but what else does what say to someone who comes out with (I quote from memory): "On that day I became a Palestinian. Never forget, never forgive."? Hell, let's nail them for making Pilate crucify Jesus while we're about it! The point about friendly fire stands, I think, unless you can *prove* otherwise. And you can't. Why in God's name would the Israelis risk alienating their only ally? It doesn't make sense.

By the way, it was no secret, though not terribly relevant, that the Soviets were in Vietnam -- I've always taken it for granted that Vietnam was a proxy war.

Re:From an Australian....

[gustavf]

Many spy thrillers have claimed there is another classification above Top Secret, without needing to shoot me, can you confirm or deny that? :)

I believe "Cosmic Top Secret" is considered to be above Top Secret. CTS is as far as I know used by NATO for information that is Top Secret in several countries or something like that.

Mathematical Wonderland...

[sahai]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this yet. The NSA is reportedly one of the biggest employers of mathematicians in the world. They have had decades of time to develop their own theories as well as learn from all the work going on in the open. We can only imagine the kind of mathematical wonderland the NSA must have built up by now!

I hope at some point their theorems start being declassified. It would be fascinating to know how many things were done first by the NSA (Public Key Cryptography is rumored to be one such thing) and how many others have no parallels in the outside world. Given the nature of its general mission, I'm sure that the NSA has an interest in Computer Science and Complexity Theory. For all we know, the NSA could be sitting on a proof that "P != NP" and none of us would know any better!

People who don't know where to stop

[Alex Belits]

IMHO the problem is not that spies exist, or that someone is working on inventing and breaking codes -- those things are unavoidable. Just like there is no problem in the fact that people are trying to make money. Problems starts when the desire to have comfortable life turns into all-destroying passion to get all money and power in the world, obliterating everything that remotely looks like competition in the process (I believe, you know few examples of that) and reasonable concern about enemies' secrets turns into self-perpetuating activity with one goal -- to get all information that may exist, and find out everything it is related to. It becomes not about security -- it approaches logic like this: "we have found that some random guy went to the airport, and now can find all people who went to the airport -- we now must at any cost make it possible to determine why, and become able to do so for every guy who went to the airport. Or into a gun store. Or into any suspiciously-looking meeting".

No goals, no justifications, no restrictions -- just have to do because in theory we can. There are satellites that carry phone converstaions? We must pass everything through our listening stations, or our missions will be considered failed. There are internet backbones? We won't sleep well until we not only would be able to listen to any particular transmission -- we have to make it possible to listen to all transmissions, simultaneously, and with all possible kinds of filtering/searching/recording. (And there are two guys with smoke signals? We don't care if someone will die, but we must have all their messages). There are laws that forbid us from spying on our citizens? Sign agreement with some other spies to bypass those laws.

What for? Why infringe on people's privacy in cases when it's forbidden by law, and is absolutely pointless for national security, except for cases so rare and unusual that it can't possibly justify the damage caused by spying and especially spying-supporting measures, such as crypto restrictions? After all it damages exactly what it is supposed to protect -- society, its laws and economy.

I'm afraid, the answer is the same as in the case of money -- just like Bill Gates has no use for his billions, and keeps his world conquest efforts just to prove himself that he is not a loser (who he absolutely certainly is -- life of maniac is pretty miserable), "spook agencies" have no use for a lot of information, yet collect it to remain busy, and to be proud of being the largest waste of money in the world.

IMHO if they were rational, they would know that some things are worth spying, some aren't, and some shouldn't even though theoretically they can be of some use. No matter how well funded NSA or even FBI, or even ECHELON will be, they will have no chance against suicidal school shooter (ex: Columbine). And some well-developed technology plus a lot of "normal" intelligence activity will give more useful information to the army (like, location of buildings in hostile countries) than millions of hours of randomly recorded conversations, especially considering that ones that are really "interesting" are still very likely unbreakable in the time when they are still useful.

I don't think that they really are listening to everything, so I may be exaggerating things, however the problem is, their goal is to be able to listen to everything all the time, no matter how useless it is.

Language oddities

[Alex Belits]

There is one unusual thing that seems to be limited to their(?) jargon -- abbreviations (but not acronyms) or even complete words written in all caps -- "COMINT", "SIGINT", "COMSEC", "MOONPENNY".

Commercial companies use BiCapitalization with complete words, glued together (lack of creativity, insensitivity to ugliness, treatment of language as a playing field in grab-a-trademark game), government uses acronyms (sounds obscure and important, requires some "inside" knowledge to participate in an argument), but computers geeks language is different. In normal speech only acronyms are capitalized ("TCP/IP", "SMTP"), other kinds of abbreviations are rare and mostly one word (that however may be leaked from a programming language), or abbreviated (or otherwise odd) words in plural, converted to verb, etc.: "sig", "grep", "caps", "sigs", "ifdefs", "to grep". All caps are used in:

1. Old programming languages. This is more like a side effect of technical problem with terminals that only had caps, than tradition. I remember the use of capitalized words in normal speech ("FORMAT statement", "COMMON block", "FUNCTION statement", "between BEGIN and END"), however no one ever used those outside its meaning as something special, limited to programming language ("format" never was all-caps unless someone meant dreaded FORMAT statement in FORTRAN).
2. Some operating systems that enforced the use of caps in filenames -- I remember working with RT11 and RSX11M and inventing very odd-looking names for 6-characters and 8-characters filenames. I can understand that someone can come up with "SIGINT.TXT" and the like, however I never seen such things leaking into normal language.
3. Names of constants and enums (including SIGINT's namesake that is defined as 2). Again, they are confined to the meaning that they have in the language ("program received ENOENT") and never inspired invention of such things outside of it.
4. The word "STREAMS" (SysV ones). I have no freaking idea, how it was invented, however originally it was not capitalized, then capitalized, and only last version was in all caps. It's not a nice thing anyway.

I am not familiar with military jargon, it may be from there.

Re:But I like conspiracies...

[innerFire]

I also like the fact that I personally have easy access to 128-bit encryption but that the average stupid criminal doesn't.

Why do you think criminals can't get 128-bit or better encryption? Just because US citizens can't export it does not mean it does not exist everywhere within and without the US. Terrorists in country X are not bound by laws (by definition), let alone US laws. Do you really think encryption is the unique invention of Americans?

And can I get some of that great crack you're smoking?

Re:From an Australian....

[sjames]

that budgets can be motherlodes of unexpected info

That is very true, and is an issue. It would be somewhat helpful if secrets were given an expiration date to allow for some sort of checks and balances. After all, other than avoiding embarassment, what reason can there be for keeping pre -WWII information classified? Are we really afraid Saddam will attack us with a fleet of top secret Sopwith Camels?

Re:NSA

[sjames]

National security.

The problem isn't their goal, but how they define it and the means to that goal. For example, many people are of the opinion that either the Demicans or the Republicrats are bad for the country. Or that they are OK, but the upstart independants are a bad thing.

Many times, government agencies have decided that a particular fact being in the news would harm national security. Watching how a group of poor black men died of syphallis while telling them they were recieving treatment was once defined to be in the interest of National Security (tm, pat. pend.) At one time citizens of Japanese descent were put in concentration camps in the interest of National Security.

The point is, when you're in power, it's amazing how whatever is good for you is 'in the interest of National Security'.

Re:NSA Exodus

[sjames]

There isn't some super-secret multi-billion dollar slush fund to pay off spies everywhere.

Considering that their budget is classified, how do we know that? We do know that some people working in the private sector were paid well to engineer faulty crypto products for embassy use.

Re:NSA Exodus

[sjames]

working unknown to their employer for the NSA

www.aci.net/kalliste/speccoll.htm [aci.net]
http://www.interesting-p eople.org/archive/199610/0041.html [interesting-people.org]

Of course, you backed up my statement for me. Note that I do not claim that there is an ongoing operation, I am just pointing out that it isn't exactly unheard of, and that with congress and the public being kept in the dark, we can't say it isn't happening.

NSA good reading book!!

[Coins]

If you can find it, get a copy of "Puzzle Palace". Written by a fellow that retired from the NSA. It's got just about everything you ever wanted to know in it.

Re:Puzzle Palace

[rew]

Hmm. Interesting:

wolff/queso-980922# ./queso www.nsa.gov:8080
208.212.172.33:8080 * Solaris 2.x
wolff/queso-980922# ./queso www.nsa.gov:80
208.212.172.33:80 *- Linux-2.2.x or Freebsd.

-- Roger.

Unsung heroes? Bah!

[African Dyoung]

I'm floored by the credulity of some people. Time and time again the media expose the scams pulled off by our government's secret organizations and yet there are still people out there who still say to themselves and anyone who asks that they don't know what a secret organization does, but that they're certain it's beneficial and just.

It's sad that the citizens of democratic countries glory in their governments' secret organizations. Government organizations that keep secrets from the citizenry obscure the powers and actions of the government. But in a democracy, the government's power is lent it by the people. Its actions are authorized by the people. It is no less rational for the people to give up the right to observe what their government is doing with their authority than to give up the right to vote; the results are the same: the usurpation of their power.

Perhaps the nation's security demands that the government keep some secrets, but we permit our government to keep secrets from us only reluctantly and mindful of the threat to democracy that secrecy poses.

It's no relief that there are "only geeks," so to speak, in the NSA. One of the problems with our democracy is that too few Americans are willing to exercise their moral autonomy, to get informed, or to clarify and assert their values at the polls or in the workplace. In my experience, geeks are a little worse in this regard, on average. So we're probably a little worse off for there being "just geeks" in the NSA than spooks a la James Bond.

Re:From an Australian....

[scrytch]

> Many spy thrillers have claimed there is another classification above Top Secret, without needing to shoot me, can you confirm or deny that? :)

SCI: Special Compartmentalized Intelligence.

It's not any more secret than Top Secret, but it has more stringent rules concerning its distribution. Having Top Secret clearance doesn't automatically clear you for SCI. It's the codified definition of "need to know". SCI information viewed on computers is done in a separate room on separate wiring where even the nearby water pipes are electrically isolated. Very secure stuff. But otherwise a well-known level of security.

The stuff more secret than that is the stuff that doesn't have a classification. It's the stuff the president or the director of the NSA or CIA says to another aide "don't tell this to anyone, ANYONE, got it?" In other words, pretty much all your extralegal stuff.

Re:NSA good reading book!!

[kzinti]

James Bamford, author of Puzzle Palace, never worked for the NSA or any other government agency. He's a professional writer/journalist, according to the short bio inside the book. He works for ABC News and has written for the Washington Post, among others.

The book is excellent, if a bit dry in places. It's about 20 years old, so the technology he describes is way out of date, but the portrait he paints of the agency's activities seems pretty accurate.

--JT

Re:From an Australian....

[kzinti]

According to Bamford's Puzzle Palace, the NSA employed over 68,000 people back in 1978, making it larger than any other US intelligence agency. With the increase over the last 21 years in telephone traffic, cell phones, the Internet, etc., and in the corresponding US law enforcement reliance on COMINT, that number must surely have grown.

So you're from Down Under. Ever heard of Pine Gap? Bamford describes it as being in the Australian interior some eleven and a half miles from Alice Springs. He described it as being a listening post, receiving information from NSA satellites, and eavesdropping on Australia, New Zealand, and southeast Asia. Another NSA installation Bamford describes is in the Woomera Prohibited Area, 600 miles southeast of Pine Gap. Bamford wrote over 20 years ago, though, so those operatios may not be operating today.

--JT

Re:NSA good reading book!! (amazon links)

[kzinti]

And there's also David Kahn's The Codebreakers [amazon.com] which is a comprehensive survey of cryptology. And I do mean comprehensive: he goes back as far as 1900 BC, describing unusal hieroglyphics on the tomb of the nobleman Khnumhotop II in Mene Khufu on the Nile. From there, he works his way forward. I'm hoping to finish this kilopage tome sometime this year so I can move on to Cryptonomicon.

--JT

Re:Hollywood Accurate? HA! ...

[NatePuri]

Ok so they have something in common with the rest of us.

Here's something they don't have in common with the rest of us.

When the Congress subpoenas information from you company usually a letter from lawyers that says 'sorry, atty client privilege' is not sufficient to end the inquiry.

Re:Hello Springfield!

[um... Lucas]

The president definetly should NOT ever have top secret clearance, unless in the case of war, where (s)he should be allowed to know everything relevant to the situation at hand. The presidential post is pretty much a revolving door. New presidnt every four or eight years. That's a security issue. Generals, etc... can and do recieve higher security clearances than the president, because it's their job, and #2, barring unforeseen circumstances, a high ranking military official last much longer than the president (in terms of staying in a role where they would need to have the clearances they do.)

To our American readers

[orpheus]

A lot of Americans unconsciously think of Austalians as being 'just like us', due to the (occassionally ;>) shared language and frontier influence.

However when I read this post, I was immediately reminded of Pine gap (etc.) and the fact that we (through the British) once effectively overthrew a duly elected Australian administration (ousting the PM) because he asked too many embarrassing questions about intelligence actvities at massive US intelligence installations in their own country.)

I just thought I'd provide that bit of background so his post could be properly appreciated (I hope that I haven't misread the Australian's intent) since I know thesefacts are not widely known in the US. We don't just mess with banana republics (Chile, Allende) or even 'darkie' NATO allies (Greece, where we actively assisted in a military overthrow of of a democratic parliament)

I say 'darkie' because, though many of the principals were unprejudiced and principled, the overall institutional outlook seemed to be -well, racist isn't quite the right word, but it's close.

Re:From an Australian....

[Andy Social]

"Grave Damage" is the definition of Top Secret in the U.S. security agencies.

"Serious Damage" is Secret, and "Can be expected to cause damage in some degree" is the weaselly-worded definition of Confidential.

Seems like we could classify nearly anything as Confidential if we wanted to. :-)

Re:NSA

[nsaspook]

I was a radioman in the USN with a TS/CRYPTO/SBI
ticket. I worked down in Key West in the mid 70's
at a receiver station. We ran most of the crypto
gear for comms at the base. Most of the crap the
NSA collects is total junk. We snooped Cuban broadcasts "TV, radio" typed it up and sent it to
FT. MEADE via TTY. Typing up Casro's 4 hour
speeches was not fun. Scan the net for FBIS, they
are a NSA front to collect overseas broadcasts.
The only time I had any real contact with a NSA
agent was for a lost key card on a KWR-37 crypto
unit. We set the key card down on a table and it
got stuck to the back of a clipboard that had a
wad of gum on it. You DON'T want to lose a card!!
If you do everone in the world useing that keylist
has to dump the correct card and use a spare. After searching for the card to two days we found it. I had visions of 10 years in jail during that
time.

Re:Doesn't NRO watch the birds?

[DragonHawk]

Isn't satellite monitoring the responsibility of the NRO?

The NRO is responsible for visual spy satalites, i.e., pictures of things the enemy is doing.

The satalite stuff the NSA does is to intercept electronic communications (voice and data), so the NSA can monitor and attempt to decrypt enemy message traffic.

From an Australian....

[Militant]

Is it just me, or are there far too many people employed in the NSA? I have heard they dwarf the CIA and FBI. There can't be all that much work to do directly arming the FBI, CIA and military with intelligence and encyption related stuff so I would say the rest of the job is their involvement in Echleon (sp?) and other US-centric attempts at keep an eye on the world's intelligence. I find the whole echelon network to be a huge waste of time. And I don't see anything particularly altruistic about it either.

Undoubtedly, their charter mentions the benefit of the US and the US alone, but wouldn't it be cool if the effort could be expended (and the equipment and resources) working on something that will benefit everyone, not just those who have signed the right agreements with the US.

-- Evan Read

Linux -- "It is computing, Jim, but not as we know it"

Re:In fact, slashdot is populated by NSA agents...

[JimMcCusker]

I don't work there, but my company (myself included) writes software for them, and we sure do read /. And I run Mandrake there too. :-)

I work in Natural Language Processing at my company, and I work on summarization software for them. It seems that it's difficult (damn near impossible) to keep up with the flood of information that is now available in the open. Never mind the encrypted stuff! I don't know what exactly is going on there, but they listen to everything they can. FWIW, one of my co-workers claims that they are very good about avooinding listening to anything involving a US citizen once they know they are. All I can say is that if they are doing something they shouldn't, well, most people in my department are also very strong advocates of strong crypto, and wouldn't trust anything that the NSA approves.

Hollywood got it right (once, at least)

[Wonko42]

My stepfather worked for the NSA from around 1980-1993. During that time, he was stationed in Germany and his job was to spy on the Russians. He worked in a very high-security complex with a lot of nifty spy gadgets and phone taps and bugs and things of that nature. According to his stories, the NSA actually did do a very small amount of dabbling in the secret agent type of thing, but not much, and nothing involving blowing things up or things of that nature.

Anyway, he also once told me that when the movie Sneakers [imdb.com] came out in 1992, the NSA actually issued an order to all its employees stating that under no circumstances were they to comment to the press or anyone else on the movie's validity (the movie deals a lot with the NSA). Apparently, the movie was very, very accurate in its depiction of the NSA, and even included quite a few details that had been top secret. And aside from all that, it's a pretty good movie, too. :)

Re:In fact, slashdot is moderated? by NSA agents..

[pavon]

Hmm,
Everyone at NSA is a nerd.
All nerds read slashdot.
Every reader of slashdot can be a moderator.
:. some of the moderators work at NSA

Think I better read those Anonymous (score:-1) posts:)

Re:NSA

[remande]

Your argument against crypto is as spurious as it would be if you were trying to ban Rider trucks with Timothy McVeigh as your case.

Almost amusingly, the government started thinking about regulating the distribution of manure fertilizer, because it was (supposedly?) a fertilizer bomb in that truck. The talk went nowhere.

My guess is that Congress started thinking about it, but realized that once they banned the slinging of bull???? that they'd be out of a job.

Re:NSA - Hardworking unsung heroes

[remande]

I don't think that the entire NSA should be exposed, but I have a gut feeling that a lot of the stuff is misclassified.

I don't know if misclassification is a problem unique to the States or if it happens everywhere. But when you have a department of spooks, they often feel the need to classify information that has no need to be classified. Often, this information is embarrasing rather than strategic. Especially in the States, any government information that does not have to be classified has to be released.

The NSA itself is a secret organization. For a while, its mere existence was classified. Why? The US could have simply gone public and said "We are forming a National Security Agency, which will specialize in cryptography and counter-cryptography". How would that have caused harm to the States? Everybody assumed that this was happening anyhow, since we were code-cracking in WWII.

OTOH, there are a lot of secrets that we should keep. Look at the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The ability to keep that under wraps for so long until it was used in a war kept other forces from getting a head-start on developing countermeasures. Once it made a wartime appearance, we could publicly reveal the weapon, as our enemies had seen it already.

Currently, the NSA is so secretive that its entire budget is classified. I cannot imagine any need for an agency's entire budget to be classified. I can imagine a need for large parts, perhaps the majority, of the budget to be classified. But for crying out loud, how much are these guys spending on #2 pencils?. All that gives away is a clue into the NSA's headcount. Maybe. (Unless, of course, they are working on the dreaded pencil-gatling).

America needs to keep secrets. It needs to keep a lot of secrets. But it is keeping a lot more secrets than it has to, and thus a lot more secrets than it should.

NSA - Hardworking unsung heroes

[Diamond Slicer]

NSA is a very hardworking agency. If one wishes to tell how hard they work all one has to do is to check the parking lot at Fort Meade at about seven at night. I have done so. The lot is full of cars. It would seem to me that the media blows their involvement in gunfights and terrorist actions way out of proportion. NSA's main job is to provide the president with info, not go out and blow the world up. NSA still plays a very important role in what goes on in the country. They have their own advisor to the president, while some agencies do not like the DIA . I think we appreciate the work they do in keeping our nation safe far to little. I believe that we think like that because of the media. Someday perhaps, thier archives of records will be opened and we can come to a true understanding of everything they do for us.

My NSA stories...

[TurkishGeek]

I once met a guy at a Safeway store in Laurel, Maryland; which is perhaps at most 5-6 miles from NSA in Fort Meade. He could speak flawless Turkish, and his command of the language and his accent were probably better than most high-school educated Turks. We chatted for a couple of minutes only, and I asked him where he worked. He said he was working for the Dept. of Defense. He then cut the conversation short and told me that he had to leave, walked to his car with a Maryland licence plate and left.

I used to study at a university where NSA has a research facility disguised as an administrative building in a remote area of campus, and there used to be lots of NSA-sponsored grad students around. (University of Maryland, College Park) All of those students will tell you that they work for the Department of Defense.

Re:From an Australian....

[jflynn]

That's interesting, I never thought of having to train people in correct classification of information, but of course you need guidelines.

Many spy thrillers have claimed there is another classification above Top Secret, without needing to shoot me, can you confirm or deny that? :)

Isn't it true that anyone in the business of collecting intelligence is bound to end up with a lot of stuff that would be good for political or monetary blackmail, but not very related to national defense? It must be kind of tricky classifying, securing, and defining access to such information.

Re:NSA

[THB]

I think that the best way for this problem to be solved, would be for a government agency to obtain a code breaking computer, and operate it publicly. It would require a warrent to use. Then they could encourge the use of strong crypto, at least dommesticly. Internatioally would be a bigger problem, but it the millitary operated simillar machines in the public eye, it may work.

The problem with this is that it would require the NSA to admit they have the technology to crack strong crypto (granted that they can, but with their budget and personal, it seems likely). It would also stir up many paranoid people, who would only see it as more evidence that their being watched.

I know many paranoid people would consider this even worse, i think that it would be a huge step forward. I would hate to see a child molester get off because he encrypted the photos that he took and then just got rid of the key.

Re:NSA

[cdlu]

Anyone remember the Hunt for the Red October? And its send-back to the authour for rework?

That book offers a lot of insights in to who is really in charge in the US.

In Canada, we have CSIS. Noone ever seems to have even heard of CSIS. (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), and they keep getting in trouble with the mounties. A couple of years back, they were informed by the RCMP that they did not, in fact, have the authority to use wire-taps without a warrant and permssion from the RCMP.

The RCMP, on the other hand, afaik, does do internal spying, to make sure no one is doing spying on our country. (Like Canada has any military secrets, anyhow.)

The NSA, from what I gather, is a bunch of laptop toting geeks who are endlessly obsessed with breaking codes, tracking technology in foreign countries, know who's doing what, when, and how, and reading slashdot.
They are secretive, but I can't think of a government agency, of this nature, in any country (KGB anyone?) that actually tells the country what they're doing.

Its not in the government's best interest to spy on its own citizens and not tell them anything that they are doing. The populous is a gigantic mind that has been taken by social darwinism, and has an interest in protecting itself. It builds itself a government to protect it and choose what to do to get to that end. The NSA is just a reaction to this. It is there to figure out who is doing what, when, and how, that could possibly jeapordise the safety or survival of the populous. It is _not_ there just to see if they can break code.
To them, seeing someone using stronger encryption sends a flag to them saying 'I wonder if this person has something to hide" and they want to make sure they don't.

Just my $0.02 (add GST if in Canada)

Re:But I like conspiracies...

[dennisp]

Um, not that I like getting off topic even more, but have you ever heard of reaganomics? Reagan was a supply sider who relied on unproven, wishful economic policies that ulimately hurt the economy. He believed in big business tax cuts -- while cutting goverment spending -- hoping that it would take a turn for the business cycle. Well unfortunately, cutting goverment spending while cutting taxes for big businesses, is more like a trade off. They both offset each other, leaving the economy where it was before. If anyone here has ever read any keynesian literature, they would know that much government spending is automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance and welfare. The problem with stagflation (higher prices[inflation] and lower output), however, is that you dig yourself a hole that is hard to climb out of. Therefore, it's a good thing that sound keynesian economists like greenspan are in power today.

In times of economic prosperity, where inflation is starting to show its ugly face in the gdp deflator or core cpi, it's smart to raise interest rates and cut government spending. Just as it's smart to increase government spending and decrease interest rates during the dips in the business cycle. Yes, general economic theory does state that as inflation rises, so will employment. However, fiscal and monetary policy have to be working and reacting in the first place to adjust for unknowns such as high rising oil cartel prices (happening now as in the 80's)-- otherwise you get big dips and peaks in the business cycle.
----------

Hello Springfield!

[nutty]

My NSA?

Kinda like the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where Homer Simpson works. Lots a little switches and do-hickeys. All scientific. Everybody is a phony. High security sure, but layed back work.
They definately have doughnuts and vending machines. O ya, and they crack code nobody else can. But who care about that?!? ;)


And the biggest parallel of them all? -- Evil Bosses...

Mr. Burns = US Goverment

:p
-----

Re:A few words on the NSA

[David Ham]

You think that the NSA is just a buncha nerds? Nah. This guy's obviously an NSA guy, writing this to make us THINK that they aren't the ones behind the JFK assassination.

So in my not so humble, but somewhat educated, opinion, the popular view of the NSA is fairly inaccurate, and confusingly to me, they seem uninterested in correcting that view. -- This is their method. They reel ya in with this "educated outsider" approach. Aren't interested in correcting it - nah, that's what this guy's doing.

Now watch, tomorrow morning I'll have a "heart attack," right after my computer is stolen by a "burgular".... :)

NSA Exodus

[Crimson Dude]

While I was still working for the Treasury Department last year, I was asked to do some research on certain technology businesses, but the one article that caught my eye was about the number of people from the NSA who were leaving to go work for RSA or Netscape or such designing crypto systems from 3x what they were making at the NSA. One of the comments was from a guy who had worked at Ft. Meade before leaving, and had mentioned that while there was nothing like being launched off the deck of an aircraft carrier (I would assume on an E-2 Hawkeye), he was enjoying his new job (and extra money) even more. The article made a point of mentioning that the NSA was having a hard time keeping people on after the usual four-five year stints they spend out of college. They'd get experience working on crypto for the government, and then when the time came they'd jump ship to go work in the private sector, and this had become a bit of a problem even to the point of NSA starting to offer even more money, but they just can't compete. It reminds me a lot of the numerous people I know who have left the military or just the numbers of people leaving the military because the rest of the DoD is investing so much in things like the F-22 that they can't afford to pay (opinionated) decent salaries to the guys who actually work on the tech.

NSA not so evil as you think maybe

[ronmon]

I served in the USAF from 1977-81 as a Radio Communications Analyst. Although we wore Air Force uniforms, held Air Force rank and drew Air Force paychecks, we were directly tasked by NSA and they were our actual controlling agency. After 3 1/2 years in the far east, I spent my last few months based at Fort Meade, MD (NSA HQ). Let me assure you of a few facts, though my information is obviously dated.

• They are very good at what they do. Even counting all the amazing stories you have heard, they are better than that.
• They are strictly forbidden from intercepting any communication involving at least one "US person" (which include all US citizens and any private citizen within the US regardless of nationality) and this is honored, at least in my experience. This, by the way, is in accordance with an Executive Order signed by none other than Richard M. Nixon.
• The intelligence they provide allows policy makers to make decisions based not only on known facts and our perceptions, but the perceptions of the target country. (Basic tenet of Intelligence Analysis: The facts are often less important than what is perceived to be fact).
• Everyone in the agency has TS/SCI (Special Compartmented Intelligence) clearance, which gives them access to information necessary to do their job, but they access the information in someone elses department (Need To Know). Hence, if you hear stories from someone about another department, it is probably unreliable rumor.

He's one of them...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's obviously one of them. He's just trying to make us think the NSA is not all the hype we think. Don't listen to him, he's a weasel planted in slashdot to refract the truth!

Just kidding Gary...if in fact that is your real name, after all, Anonymous Coward is my real name. wait a sec,some one's knocking at my doo ~h?#~~~~DISCONNECT

My Dad while in the Army

[Anonymous Coward]

When my dad was in Vietnam (5th Special Forces) his team was under the direction of the NSA and he answered to them. So I don't know if the NSA carries guns themselves, but they can control those that do. Their charter (or whatever), Executive Order 12333 of 12/4/1981 states "The Information Assurance mission provides the solutions, products and services, and conducts defensive information operations, to achieve information assurance for information infrastructures critical to U.S. national security interests." To me, this would indicate that they can proform "operations" to gather information for "national security interests". Sounds like employing spys to me. FYI: my dad's missions involved being in countries that the US was not supposed to be involved in doing recon.

Some interesting info

[Analog]

the stories of their involvement in Danger and Daring Do are greatly exaggerated. I would doubt that many of them have ever held a gun before.

Probably true, but they do have field agents; what sort of activities these guys do is anybody's guess. One interesting piece of trivia is that the first American casualty in Viet Nam was an NSA agent posing as a USAF SSgt.

They're also doing some of the leading work in things like computerized face recognition. They've already got this working surprisingly well, and claim that it's far more accurate than a fingerprint. 'Course if they admit that much, who knows what they've actually got going there; maybe it can guess your weight too. ;)

The most interesting thing to me is that they have their own fab; they can design and build all the custom chips they want in house. I'd be willing to bet they've commited some sweet things to silicon in there. It's also interesting to note that they say the fab is for designing chips for the purposes of encryption, not decryption. Personally, I wonder how big a wink comes with that statement.

Re:Some interesting info

[sjames]

Identical twins have similar faces but different fingerprints. How can face recognition be more accurate than fingerprinting?

Because it's a lot easier to alter your fingerprints than it is to alter your face. It's also very hard to covertly use someone's severed head as an id.

Re:Let me clear the (brain)fog

[cpt kangarooski]

They said the computer (that could do the crack in under a second) was called a "Thinking Machine" it's actually a CM-5 (connection machine 5) made by Thinking Machines, Inc. Lotsa places have CM-5s, they're one of the most popular production supercomputers. Univ's like U. of Illinois (NCSA) and others have them availible to students.

The NSA has a CM-5. I know, because I saw it. Sitting idle in the public museum. With other 'outdated and useless' computers (like a Cray XMP and a big robotic disk loader).

So if they don't use a CM-5 because it's obsolete for them, I shudder to think of what they do use. Although god forbid they should sell the old mainframes to people who could give them good homes. Quake's been ported to the Connection Machine, right?

Re:NSA ... One more thing...

[kevlar]

I never said this was a fact, and I even said that this is _NOT_ a conspiracy theory. All I was stating was that I thought it was weird that she'd know shitloads about everything else, but when it came to PGP specificly she wouldn't answer any questions. From her reaction, I got the impression that there was something else going on other then her just not knowing. In fact her answer wasn't "I don't know" but rather "I can't discuss that" (not verbatum). I probably should've said this earlier though ;)

Re:Some interesting info

[Andy Social]

He wasn't POSING as an Air Force SSgt, he WAS an Air Force E-5. As an Army SSG (E6) working with the NSA, I can assure you that the military is a LARGE part of the NSA's efforts to protect our interests in the SIGINT land. The fact that you think that the NSA poses as military members indicates to me that you don't have your facts straight. I have seen the Discovery special (we actually show it to new SIGINT geeks as an orientation) and it mentioned the VN connection, accurately as an AF member. Also, notice that Discovery special showed the NSA memorial to the hundreds of fallen military and civilian workers who are "Always Out Front" (Army SIGINT motto).

For more relatively fact-filled info, read the Puzzle Palace. It's a bit dated, but it provides an interesting historical note to the NSA's beginnings.

I'm sorry Folks

[GW Hayduke]

As A Class Level C security holder, I must now take all of you in custody. You have discussed a three letter anacronym that shall not be observed without the proper clearance, which we all have not * since the reason why I have not said ...SAID anacronym *
Seriously folks, my father and I have both worked for the intelligence community, and it is NOTHING LIKE we see in the movies.... Especially the NSA,
Picture a bunch of tie-dyed dead-head ( oh Hell forget the stereotypes) THEY ARE GEEKS JUST LIKE SOME OF US!!!!!!!!!!!! they just have better paying jobs with more security concerns than the average BOFH (like me)..... Like DLR said on "Everybody wants some"..... " come on guys.... Gimme a break "

Re:NSA

[DragonHawk]

They also said that it was able to brute force a regular unix password in less than a second!

A modern day PC can brute-force a typical UNIX password in under ten hours. Far less for a password based on a dictionary word, etc. Put a supercomputer on it, and I'm sure it won't take long. This is why we have shadow passwords... :-)

I figured if she would answer my question that it'd be that they attack the seperate components of PGP, but since she _didn't_ answer it, I assumed that they know of a weakness in it

More likely, she just didn't know. The biggest misconception people have about large government agencies is that they function as a single unit. That is contrary to one of the most basic rules of security -- unless you need to know, you don't.

Puzzle Palace

[paul r]

If you're interested in the NSA James Bamford has done a great job writing a history of No Such Agency, _The_Puzzle_Palace_ It doesn't have the latest developments (written in the early 80's) but it's about as good as I think you can get being on the outside.

They also have a homepage: http://www.nsa.gov:8080/

Re:From an Australian....

[paul r]

Here's an interesting comment I found regarding the size and funding of the NSA:

* "Spying Budget Is Made Public By Mistake", By Tim Weiner
* The New York Times, November 5 1994
*
* By mistake, a Congressional subcommittee has published an unusually
* detailed breakdown of the highly classified "black budget" for United
* States intelligence agencies.
*
* In previously defeating a bill that would have made this information
* public, the White House, CIA and Pentagon argued that revealing the
* secret budget would cause GRAVE DAMAGE to the NATIONAL SECURITY of
* the United States.
*
* $3.1 billion for the CIA
* $10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force
* and Marines special-operations units
* $13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA
*
* The only damage done so far is to the
* credibility of those who opposed the measure.

Blood??

[Hobbex]

The NSA is an organisation designed and designated to, in secret, subvert both American and non-American privacy and freedom for the larger cause of "national security" (and to some extent even some international security).

However, national security is a thing of the past. What threat is their towards american national freedom? Really?

There is only one enemy left, and it is only as dangerous as we are letting it be (for reasons of commerce) and actually more interested in the continued repression of its own people then anything to do with us (hmm, I wonder if Chinese people can access Slashdot... and if they do??).

Instead, the entire intelligence community, which, no doubt, is undemocratic in the very secrecy of its nature, has gotten so happy with its own unbarred existance that it just is not about to let go. To some extent they try to justify their actions in the public eye by speaking of the horrid, but largely imaginary, terrophiles from which they are keeping us and our children safe, but to an even larger degree they don't need to defend themselves. Shadow organizations like the NSA already have their claws so deep in the bumbling, populistic, corrupted to the bone political climates like Washington, that they simply are not under any threat at all.

SAFE will never pass. The NSA knows it, we know it.

What I wonder about, more than anything else is: Where does the NSA find new mathematicians?

They are the largest employer of mathematicians in the WORLD, meaning they are picking the best and brightest of maths majors like me right out of university and using them in a work that is shifting from subverting the freedom of people to the useless struggle to keep an organization with no use alive.

Why do people do it? As I see it, it must either be ignorance or cynisism. Either because they, like the scientists who worked away building bombs and rockets for the Nazis, are too enclosed in their work and research to look even one second at what they are doing, and who they are doing it for.

Or, because they share the simple, yet dark, conviction that a free society needs to be schimera in order to exist. That man kind simply isn't capable of being free without destroying itself. That out of arrogance for people they are doing them a favour by deciding their lives for them.

And maybe they are right. But then I say we might as well let things take their course. Give me freedom or ... you know the cliche.

-
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

Re:RAND and the NSA

[cyanoacrylate]

> The RAND Corporation's Netwar report, prepared
> for the U.S. government, recommends that the
> govt assists repressive governments in defending
> themselves in struggles over their reputations,
> and that repressive governments can do this with
> a variety of dirty tricks and covert operations.

You obviously didn't read the summary... The
whole point was that a repressive government was
vulnerable to a netwar if and only if it is:

1. In a state of political flux
2. In the process of opening up political freedom
3. Requiring greater world participation in its
economy.

Thus, only states which are becoming more
liberalized, with greater personal freedoms and
are starting to actually participate in the world
economy and wish to benefit from international
trade are vulnerable to this sort of attack.

Looks to me like the whole concept of a netwar is
empowering a minority to harass a (silent?)
majority. Hmmm...

So... A radical revolutionary group who wishes
to overthrow a burgeoning democratic government
starts a netwar and sets them back 10 years
because there's so much apparent trouble in this
country that nobody wants to do any business with
them. Thus, even though it is the growth of freedom in such a country which provides the
tools necessary to do public damage, and

NSA - who knows?

[jflynn]

I'm sure the NSA is far less scary than Hollywood would have it, unless you happen to be on their short list anyway.

I guess the major question in my mind is the degree of autonomy they may have. Presuming they are effectively reviewed and controlled by our government and not a hidden branch of it, there's not much more to fear there than with the military. Just make sure the politicians don't use them inappropriately. How you can do that without knowing what the NSA is up to is an interesting question however. Amounts to electing those you trust, which leaves some of us a little unsatisfied.

In view of the lack of normal feedback over operations I consider a distrust of the NSA a healthy thing. If they tried something really horrible, and it got out, people would believe it. You might consider Echelon an example. So they have to be a little careful, both in their security, and not doing stuff that's too embarassing if they get caught, because eventually, everything that's really juicy leaks.

And a couple more . . .

[Discoflamingo13]

I can corroborate your view- I attended Presidential Classroom in summer of '97- our program coordinator was "flag"-level clearance at teh NSA. (if you don't know, maybe you don't want to) We had a walking tour of the facilities, and this much I can tell you- #- The NSA is the #1 recruiting center for "theoretical" mathematicians (number/ring/field theory, abstract/linear algebra, analysis) in the world. (approximately 70% of the talent pool) Read their recruiting page (easy enough to find)- at least the NSA realizes that pure mathematics eventually advances all of technology. #- Where we visited, the people were quiet but friendly: to sum up, there are numerous signs with 50's-style comic-book people waving their fingers and saying "Remember, no confidential talk." #- The NSA is an impressive R&D dept. in their own rite outside of cryptography- the projects we were "allowed" to view included: high-penetration PCMCIA wireless-LAN (at the time of my visit, 1000 yards through concrete and steel); fingerprint pattern recognition via embedded systems about as big as a credit card (dead serious- we were told to expect it to be a standard in about 4-5 years);and finally, natural language recognition that gives Dragon Naturally Speaking (?) pause. (so far, Spanish, Japanese, and certain dialects of English are recognized) It's an impressive facility, and I would encourage anyone who wants to know more to take the tour- there ARE certain things that the people who work there can tell you about. Not EVERYTHING's top secret.

Stupid Criminals...

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Are the ones we catch. The ones who get nominated for Darwin awards. The ones who fail.

You will never see a smart criminal because they don't get caught. They get elected for office, own corporations, control institutions, etc. They figure out how to use the system to their advantage.

They probably aren't that different than successful businessmen, excepting that successful businessmen also, as a side effect, benefit the country, the people, or the economy.


-AS

NSA

[q[alex]]

The NSA may just be a bunch of geeks, but the power of geekhood may be used for good or for evil. Don't forget that Hitler had a huge crypto department, too, with Enigma and all. Just because an organization employs geeks doesn't mean that they're doing things true geeks/hackers would approve of. It just means they require skills that only geeks have (math & coding primarily) and are willing to pay for those skills.

Crypto in the hands of the mafia, or kiddie porn peddlers, does society no good. Crypto in the hands of honest citizens who value their privacy does society no harm. It's a shame that the NSA, the treasury department, and our government have taken the first as a reason to hinder the second.

This is what the NSA says they are.

[Beached]

This is a what the NSA claims to be:

The National Security Agency is the Nation's cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. It is also one of the most important centers of foreign language analysis and research within the Government. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is a unique discipline with a long and storied past. SIGINT's modern era dates to World War II, when the U.S. broke the Japanese military code and learned of plans to invade Midway Island. This intelligence allowed the U.S. to defeat Japan's superior fleet. The use of SIGINT is believed to have directly contributed to shortening the war by at least one year. Today, SIGINT continues to play an important role in maintaining the superpower status of the United States. As the world becomes more and more technology-oriented, the Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) mission becomes increasingly challenging. This mission involves protecting all classified and sensitive information that is stored or sent through U.S. Government equipment. INFOSEC professionals go to great lengths to make certain that Government systems remain impenetrable. This support spans from the highest levels of U.S. Government to the individual warfighter in the field. NSA conducts one of the U.S. Government's leading research and development programs. Some of the Agency's R&D projects have significantly advanced the state of the art in the scientific and business worlds. NSA's early interest in cryptanalytic research led to the first large-scale computer and the first solid-state computer, predecessors to the modern computer. NSA pioneered efforts in flexible storage capabilities, which led to the development of the tape cassette. NSA also made ground-breaking developments in semiconductor technology and remains a world leader in many technological fields. Who is the NSA? NSA employs the country's premier codemakers and codebreakers. It is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States and perhaps the world. Its mathematicians contribute directly to the two missions of the Agency: designing cipher systems that will protect the integrity of U.S. information systems and searching for weaknesses in adversaries' systems and codes. Technology and the world change rapidly, and great emphasis is placed on staying ahead of these changes with employee training programs. The National Cryptologic School is indicative of the Agency's commitment to professional development. The school not only provides unique training for the NSA workforce, but it also serves as a training resource for the entire Department of Defense. NSA sponsors employees for bachelor and graduate studies at the Nation's top universities and colleges, and selected Agency employees attend the various war colleges of the U.S. Armed Forces. Most NSA/CSS employees, both civilian and military, are headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, centrally located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Its workforce represents an unusual combination of specialties: analysts, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, as well as customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts, managers, administrative and clerical assistants

In fact, slashdot is populated by NSA agents....

[cdmoyer]

In fact.. based on this model of what the NSA is and isn't... many of the people reading this are members of the NSA... /. is afterall 'News for Nerds'.

NSA MONDAY MORNING {at the coffee machine):
NSA AGENT 1: Hey guys, did you check out slashdot over the weekend?
AGENT 2: No, I was installing Mandrake 6.1 and I coulnd't get the darn ppp connection up..
AGENT 1: Well check it out... they're on to us.

a small view from the inside

[neko the frog]

hi, i'm neko, and i work for the nsa. (crowd replies "hi, neko")

seriously, i'm a korean linguist, and while i put on an air force uniform to go to work, it's the nsa which really calls the shots. although i've not worked in the nsa headquarters in maryland (i don't plan on it either, since it just means getting bounced back here to korea every other year, and korea's not bad anyway), i can tell you what i know from my perspective (well, not all of it, of course).

to be honest, what we do we regard as Just a Job. granted, a deadly serious job, but that's as maybe, it's still a job. we don't go around talking spy talk or codewords, i've never met agent 99, we don't hack into you computer at night, and we spend more time than any of us will admit irritating each other with stupid practical jokes just like everyone else (we locked our flight commander in a phone booth the other night, that was a sight :) ). we aren't freaks, and i can attest that we're not all brainiacs (don't make me recall some bad examples *shiver*)

as for specifically what we do, i of course can't say much about it, but suffice to say that no, we don't spend our time spying on americans, or south koreans for that matter. in fact, there are quite explicit guidelines about making damn sure that we don't. as for the 'black helicopter' conspiracy perception of the lot of us, i have to say it's pretty much bogus from what i've seen. personally i thought the earlier story regarding bar codes with social security number being placed on high school students to be far more disturbing than anything i've seen here. we sure the hell don't do anything like that.

in short, if you don't believe anything i've said here, and hate us because of some book you read or something on dateline, then fine, that's not our job. just remember that our job is to help prevent wars, and help minimalize the loss of american lives in case one breaks out, and i think we do a damned good job of it. i know south korea is happy to have us here (and they do know exactly what we do, sicne we work with korean soldiers side by side), even if you're not.

Re:I dunno, but...

[jkovach]

NSA job requirements:

- Degree in computer science/engineering, electrical engineering, math, or whatever language the enemy is speaking today (Arabic languages)
- U.S. citizenship of you and your immediate family (though I hear this is sometimes waived)
- Ability to pass a detailed background check for security clearance

That's about it. The NSA has all sorts of educational programs, such as one I am applying for where they will pay for your college education if you go to work for them afterwards. Free college, guaranteed employment, and if you're really good private enterprise will pay 'em off and you go work for someone else.

NSA

[kevlar]

From what I know (based on a Discovery Channel program) they have their own chip manufacturers in their main headquarters making processors for a warehouse-sized supercomputer submersed in a non-conductive coolant (which is located in the basement). They also said that it was able to brute force a regular unix password in less than a second! Thats 30 Years of computing time for those of us with a pentium.

A woman from the NSA recently came to give a colloqium for the math dept at my school. One of the things she talked about was cryptography and why the NSA doesn't like us having large keys. One of my questions was why the NSA has never (as far as I know) attacked PGP. I figured if she would answer my question that it'd be that they attack the seperate components of PGP, but since she _didn't_ answer it, I assumed that they know of a weakness in it (maybe some type of multiplication by a number). I've been speculating ever since.

The National Stupidity Agency

[DragonHawk]

I used to work for a USAF contractor developing COMSEC (communications security) accounting software. I can tell you that that primary role of the NSA is making and breaking cryptography. (If you want to speculate wildly on secondary roles, be my guest.)

Ironically, the two parts of their major role are polar opposites. On one hand, the NSA researches new crypto systems, evaluates and approves third-party (i.e., commercial) crypto systems, generates and distributes key, and provides infrastructure to keep all that running.

On the other hand, they are constantly involved in trying to break enemy crypto systems -- providing COMINT (communications intelligence) and SIGINT (signal intelligence) to the rest of the government. They're generally not involved in classic Hollywood "spy stuff". They don't have agents (ala James Bond), domestically or abroad. That's the domain of the CIA.

To the people in the field, the NSA was a source of bureaucracy and paperwork, but did not inspire much fear. The expansion "National Stupidity Agency" was far more common then "No Such Agency".

Which is not to say the NSA is not extremely paranoid. It is. The rules for EMSEC, COMPUSEC, and the like are a royal pain in the you-know-what. The NSA invented them all. But there is nothing "secret" about those rules.

Incidentally, the NSA is trying to get out of the business of generating and distributing crypto key, because it is damn expensive and rather impractical. They distribute over something like 200 tons of crypto key annually. At the same time, however, they want to maintain full, draconian control over everything. The resulting conflicting efforts would be amusing if my tax dollars weren't paying for it.

But I like conspiracies...

[RobertGraham]

I've found in life that paranoids dream of fantasies that are much more interesting than real life, whether it's big business, big government, CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. At the same time, it doesn't mean the paranoids aren't right after a fashion.

For example, Ronald Reagon in the early 1980's purposefully caused the recession at that time. Inflation was at 14% and getting worse. According to economic theory, you should be able jack up interest rates, throw millions of people out of work, and within a year the economy will recover, but resume at a much lower inflation rate.

As it turns out, Ronnie was right. But try explaining that to the people at the beginning of the recession who lost their jobs. I'm sure if they really understood how much control the government has over whether or not to force the country into a recession, they would be majorly pissed off.

Likewise, consider US cryptographic export restrictions. While its theoretical purpose is to make it easier for the NSA to spy on foreigners, it has the weird effect of reducing encryption within the United States. The average person in the US uses 40-bit encryption. Lots of products (such as the new AirPort wireless LAN) use 40-bit encryption because of this, even within the US. I think the government really does understand that export restrictions really have an effect on the encryption used by their own population.

On the other hand, I like low-inflation, and I also like the fact that I personally have easy access to 128-bit encryption but that the average stupid criminal doesn't. In other words, I think I like conspiracies. :)

My grandfather always said...

[RaveX]

My grandfather was an agent of the NSA, and so I know a little bit about it, but most of my knowledge comes from everyone but him. He never really talks about it, but I have to wonder what a WWII vet and a NSA employee would think of Cryptonomicon. I know for a fact that he's good with simple cryptosystems, even though we have no knowledge of him ever working in that field. We (family members) believe that at later stages, he was mostly administrative, working on intercepting transmissions.

The NSA is really an outgrowth of what was known as the Army Security Agency, in which he spent a lot of time doing something involving lots of radios and the Philippines [intercepting foreign communications]. The NSA and ASA both exist now, but apparently the NSA is essentially a workhorse agency, taking orders [more like kind requests] from the other cloak-and-dagger types. They have two basic functions, those being to monitor the world's radio traffic [if one visits Fort Meade, Maryland, they will note the large geodesic bubbles on the tops of buildings; apparently the purpose is to obscure the directions their satellite dishes point, for obvious reasons], and the other being to decrypt everything in sight. At the same time, they do advise the rest of the Executive Branch on matters of systems security and in the past, have worked on developing secure cryptosystems ["in the past" because one has to wonder whether the private sector is outpacing them in that respect and rendering those efforts outdated] and implementing them.

As far as what the "real" NSA is like, I suppose it's always been a very real phenomenon for me, and I have never really had any illusions about what they do... it appears to all simple inspections that what they do is exactly what they claim to do, except that now, they have been forced to react to the internet, and have thus extended their resources in that direction. However, at least as far as bursting in anywhere, guns blazing, I think that's most likely the last thing they've ever been involved in. The most clandestine thing I can see the NSA doing is setting up big radio antennae inside sketchy little huts in the jungle. Fun :)

Re:RAND and the NSA

[merlin94121]

This thread seems to say "the NSA are technocrats".

Our tax dollars hire them to spy on everyone outside the united states and find the connections between all sorts of people, their bank accounts, their friends, political and commercial organizations. They may or may not be spying on Americans as well--they have stone-walled the U.S. Senate on the issue of Echelon.

> I've heard some say they are the biggest
> collection of brains in the US. I think that's
> probably true, except for maybe RAND.

The RAND Corporation's Netwar report [rand.org], prepared for the U.S.
government, recommends that the govt assists repressive governments in
defending themselves in struggles over their reputations, and that
repressive governments can do this with a variety of dirty tricks and
covert operations.

If these recommendations are being carried out, and I have seen some
evidence to suggest that they are, I suspect information from Echelon is
being used to destroy human-rights networks.

I personally believe NSA intelligence filters from
the NSA => the U.S. Army =>
to the Columbian army => rightwing paramilitary

If the NSA's powerful data collection capabilities have been used in this pursuit, American money is [indirectly] responsible for the the blood of, for example, Columbian and Mexican peasants killed by pro-military paramilitaries.

Merlin

Visiting the NSA

[AsianRut]

Gary, care to expand on your visit to the NSA? Here's my story:

In '95, I visited the NSA and the National Cryptographic Museum (adjacent to the NSA headquarters). I didn't make it past the barb-wire fence at the NSA, but I did encounter a few spooks.

The front gate was unattended, so I drove right in and parked as close to the big black monolith of a building as I could. My friend and I began to make silly poses and take lots of pictures, joking that we probably weren't the only ones taking photos of us. A man in a white shirt and black tie (think Michael Douglas in Falling Down) approaches us: "Are you lost?" Without waiting for an answer, he briskly walks away. We jump in the car and head to the museum.

A group of Marines were on some sort of field trip to the museum. As they exited, an officer was giving them coffee cups with the NSA seal on them. Wearing my "Clipper Chip Inside" t-shirt, I approached him and asked how I might get one. After a few minutes of "you punks don't know the reasons the world needs the Clipper Chip...to tell you would be a breach of national security," he agreed to sell me one for $8 cash.

So, no real MIB-types. But there's certainly a spook mentality around that place.