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It's their job to watch for threats both foreign and domestic.

Hold up. One second. The NSA was tasked with foreign COMINT. Now you can argue that they meant to include foreign threats on domestic soil, but you've got an uphill battle to suggest that it requires surveillance of American citizens on American soil.

The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto.

The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto.

If you read the whole thing (I skimmed quickly, and I'm pretty sure I came up empty), you will find that it does not expand responsibilities beyond this (the rest of it deals with organization of the NSA). At inception, the responsibilities pertained exclusively to foreign governments; they didn't even pertain to foreign civilian communication. I worked for the NSA for a short period; the rules drilled into us were a bit more lax as far as purely foreign surveillance went, but listening in on communications by U.S. citizens was a strict no-no.

Nonillion said:
"however some people still balk at this as 'science fiction'. I can assure you it's not. It's this kind of thing that should be waking up manufactures to the perils of shitty RFI design. Spewing broad band spectrum pollution not only causes radio interference, but also opens you to security problems."

Amen, Brother.

And when it "science fictions" across your purview - if you catch it, it becomes pretty real.
Because these techniques aren't at your favorite |-|ol3 'r US exploit sites. (Why do you think they call them elite?)

These guys "get it" -

"The Air Force [US] now dominates both air and space above a theater of operations, so it has "cross-domain dominance" there. But the Air Force must gain dominance in cyberspace as well, because cyberspace superiority is now a prerequisite to effective operations in all other warfighting domains."

The "electromagnetic spectrum" is pliable, a Faraday cage is your only refuge.
Attacks involve using RF in ways not usually used; for data over RF or VHF etc. - Packet radio, "radio modem".
It IS rocket science.
It appears they understand that.

This is Key:

"According to Dr. Kass, cyberspace is neither a mission nor an operation. Instead, cyberspace is a strategic, operational and tactical warfighting domain -- a place in which the Air Force or other services can fight.

"The domain is defined by the electromagnetic spectrum," Dr. Kass said. "It's a domain just like air, space, land and sea. It is a domain in and through which we deliver effects -- fly and fight, attack and defend -- and conduct operations to obtain our national interests."

The cyber domain includes all the places an electron travels. The electron, which is part of the atom, can travel from one atom to the next. This concept is key to electronic communication and energy transmission.

An electron may travel from a cell phone to a cell tower, for instance. The path the electron takes, the shape of its path, the speed it travels, and the direction it travels are all critical to ensuring the cell phone works and that a usable signal is received. As part of a signal, an electron can travel from a handheld computer to a reception tower, over a wire to a telephone, to a television through an antenna, from a radio transmitter to radio, and from computer to computer as part of a network.

The electron can also travel, as part of energy transmission, from a microwave oven to popcorn seeds to make them pop, from generators over a wire to a light bulb, and from an X-ray machine through bone to a detection plate to make an image for a doctor to review.

The places where the electron travels is the cyber domain, or cyberspace. And the ability to deliver a full range of cyber effects -- to detect, deter, deceive, disrupt, defend, deny, and defeat any signal or electron transmission -- is the essence of fighting in cyberspace."

http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2006/10-05.htm

Faraday Cage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

FCC ID, FCC level B emissions

http://www.austinlinks.com/Crypto/tempest.html

Your phone company or telephone manufacturer may be able to supply you with free modular filters, although the design frequencies of these filters may not be high enough to be effective through much of the EMI spectrum of interest. Keep telephone lines away from power supplies of computers or peripherals and the rear of CRTs: the magnetic field often associated with those device can inductively transfer to unshielded lines just as if the telephone line were directly electrically connected to them. Since this kind of coupling decreases rapidly with distance, this kind of magnetic induction can be virtually eliminated by keeping as much distance (several feet or more) as possible betwe

4. The first time that a single query will bring a gallery of
            results equivalent to running multiple queries about the
            meaningful variations of the same topic.

  5. The first time a search engine will let users evaluate answers
            on the spot by displaying uninterrupted and coherent text
            snippets, often letting searchers forgo having to click through
            to links and saving time.

Both of these have been available for a couple of years: e.g. searching on the single query "semantic web" using CQ web, reveals clusters such as these:


fuzzy sets
fuzzy systems
neural networks
set theory
soft computing
aritifical intelligence
control systems
expert systems


And each one of which is linked to a specific page of results using sentences instead of snippets, e.g. for artificial intelligence:


1. This paper will present the foundations of fuzzy systems...noteworthy objections to its use with examples drawn from current research in the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Systems - A Tutorial
2. The most obvious implementation for the fuzzy logic is the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Logic
3. Ultimately it will be demonstrated...fuzzy systems makes a viable addition to the field of artificial intelligence and perhaps more generally to formal mathematics.
Fuzzy Systems - A Tutorial
4. The paper gives examples of the fuzzy logic applications with emphasis on the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Logic
5. A collection of articles and other technical resources for artificial intelligence.
PC AI - Fuzzy Logic

4. The first time that a single query will bring a gallery of
            results equivalent to running multiple queries about the
            meaningful variations of the same topic.

  5. The first time a search engine will let users evaluate answers
            on the spot by displaying uninterrupted and coherent text
            snippets, often letting searchers forgo having to click through
            to links and saving time.

Both of these have been available for a couple of years: e.g. searching on the single query "semantic web" using CQ web, reveals clusters such as these:


fuzzy sets
fuzzy systems
neural networks
set theory
soft computing
aritifical intelligence
control systems
expert systems


And each one of which is linked to a specific page of results using sentences instead of snippets, e.g. for artificial intelligence:


1. This paper will present the foundations of fuzzy systems...noteworthy objections to its use with examples drawn from current research in the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Systems - A Tutorial
2. The most obvious implementation for the fuzzy logic is the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Logic
3. Ultimately it will be demonstrated...fuzzy systems makes a viable addition to the field of artificial intelligence and perhaps more generally to formal mathematics.
Fuzzy Systems - A Tutorial
4. The paper gives examples of the fuzzy logic applications with emphasis on the field of artificial intelligence.
Fuzzy Logic
5. A collection of articles and other technical resources for artificial intelligence.
PC AI - Fuzzy Logic

Poker seems to be a much more useful game for this research than chess.

Here is the kicker though, are you ready?

This is the NSA doing this.

Why is this important?

Well, in 1952, the NSA was formed to spy on foreign governments.

From the NSA's original charter: "The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence." (emphasis added).

Domestic surveillance, on U.S. soil of U.S. citizens is new territory for the spooks. Do Constitutaionl rules apply? Who knows. You could be picked up based on NSA-gathered info and end up in Gitmo or worse, and no one would ever know. THAT's the real story and begs the obvious question, why not leave this to the FBI? Probably because such a program would be subject to, oh, I dont know... due process of law.

I recognize the importance; however, let's take a step back. The SCOPE and MISSION of the NSA/CSS does not violate Constitution. Keep in mind that both the SCOPE and MISSION of the NSA/CSS was not a directive from this administration. That NSA/CSS has been around for a long time (1952).

http://www.austinlinks.com/Crypto/charter.html a good read.

"The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence."

This or this might help with the "WTF".

To bump up the obscurity factor another notch:

He could tell you, but the Scientologists would have to kill you.

Similarly, sheets or mesh screens of conductive material are routinely used to block unwanted RF interference generated by devices like computers and televisions which would otherwise create a great deal of "leakage".

So I ask again: What's new here? Why is this guy getting attention? I think any electrical engineer could figure out how to wrap a Faraday cage around a theater; the question is whether theater owners want to do it.

"There is even a system called TEMPEST that detects electromagnetic emanations from a computer monitor." ?

Really ?! And here I thought it was a code word, perhaps even an acronymn, that that identifies a classified set of standards and endorsements for LIMITING electromagnetic emissions radiated from electronic equipment.

So for all you confused members of the press:

• The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page
• TEMPEST in a teapot
• NSA/ISSO TEMPEST Endorsement Program

Still, I'm a bit bemused by the fact a mobster was smart enough to use PGP. I can only imagine what a savvy cartoonist would do with the Mafia's idea of TEMPTEST hardware !

For those of you that care, here is the real link:
http://cryptome.org/nacsim-5000.htm

also, here is a really neat site with an analysis on what this stuff really means:
http://eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html

and yet more great reading:
http://www.austinlinks.com/Crypto/tempest.html
http://www.thecodex.com/c_tempest.html
http://www.spyking.com/datascan.html

You can even vote for your favorite "kid model" site! I swear, this is just some kind of crypto-anarchist pedophile ring site or something... ick ick ick...)

Hey, since when have anarchism and pedophilia gone together? Anarchism is about class struggle, pedophilia is a deviant sexual behaviour. Totally unrelated...

So you can't have a pedophile who is also an anarchist? (Or crypto-anarchist, which is not the same thing...)

Educate yourself before you create crazy terms like that.

I created this term? Interesting; you should Timothy C. May (the guy who wrote this manifesto) that I made him up...

Why don't you educate yourself?

Jay (=