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...then we maybe don't have anything to fear... :)

http://www.nsa.gov:808 0/programs/tech/factshts/langtrng.html

Multi-Media Language Training

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: This is a complete multi-media stand-alone course based on a 30-minute situation comedy. It has a variety of learning tools amounting to a total of 160 hours of instruction at three entry levels (200 Mbytes of courseware and 100 Mbytes of audio).

This show is taped in front of a live studio audience
Mr Spy: Hiya Class!
Class: Hello Mr Spy!
Mr Spy: Today we'll learn the letter Ö. That's right kids! It's just a O with two bulletholes over it. It's commonly used in commie contries. Learn to fear it!

(A dark, weird looking janitor walks in and a flowerpots falls on his head)

Janitor (staggers around looking dazed): Ahooööööö
Mr Spy: Oh no, he's a commie spy! Kill him!

(Commercial break)
This show is brought to you by the letter O.

What will happen to the evil Janitor?
Will the class ever learn the perils of the Ö?
Be sure to catch the next episode of:
"Life in the NSA - Like Sesame Street but with more guns and no stupid gay puppets"

http://www.nsa.gov:808 0/programs/tech/factshts/langtrng.html

Multi-Media Language Training
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: This is a complete multi-media stand-alone course based on a 30-minute situation comedy. It has a variety of learning tools amounting to a total of 160 hours of instruction at three entry levels (200 Mbytes of courseware and 100 Mbytes of audio).

Mr Spy:Hiya Class!
Class: Hello Mr Spy!
Mr Spy: Today we'll learn the letter Ö. That's right kids! It's just a O with two bulletholes over it. It's only used in commie contries.

(A weird looking janitor walks in and a flowerpots falls on his head)

Janitor (staggers around looking dazed): Ahooööööö
Mr Spy: Oh no, he's a commie spy! Kill him!
(Commercial break)

This show is brought to you by the letter O.

Sounds like something I'd like to see. :)

Eschelon doesn't use a keyword search, instead it works like this. Eschelon does not use a dictionary search, but instead searches based on a very elegant but simple method which utilizes the frequency of occurances of unique strings of characters. Also check out this link to the NSA on their searching technology.

Jam Eschelon day is a really good idea, but using keywords is the wrong way to go about it. Instead, a story generator which generates subversive letters would be better.

(Thanks to Hacker News Network for the links.)

"They" are NOT using keyword matching! What they are using is a very sophisticated pattern matching that can scan for topics in texts.

This is of course only speculation...

But check out these sites that suggest that it is true:
Information Sorting and Retrieval by Language or Topic (NSA link)
Method of retrieving documents that concern the same topic (US Patent and trademark office)

Best regards,

One-time pads (OTPs) are actually "information- theoretically secure." However, a true OTP has to be generated from a truly random source. Most computers are therefore physically incapable of producing OTPs. (Being deterministic state machines, they usually have no "source" of "randomness".) And, as no-one has yet quoted Knuth or von Neumann in this thread, I get to: "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." Netscape's security was once broken by analysis of the amount of time the machine spent generating a "random" number.

Book codes such as the one you mention are actually very, very far from one-time pads. Books are certainly not random, nor are they particularily secret.

Another requirement of a theoretically secure OTP is that it truly is used only once. The Venona project was the spectacular result of the US breaking the Soviet Union's OTP system. For whatever reason, the Soviet Union clerks who produced OTP keys needed to increase production. OTP keys were supposed to be generated by putting two sheets of paper in a typewriter with a carbon between them and entering random characters. The "clever" clerks put four sheets of paper in their typewriters (with two carbons) and doubled their productivity. Once the duplicate keys were recognized by the US codebreakers, the messages were then attacked and many were broken. For a good read (minus the detailed math, sorry,) check out Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes.

For a simple explanation of the theory behind the security of a one-time pad, read Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier.

Again, one-time pads are secure, but only as long as the keys are 1) random, 2) secure, and 3) not reused. Book codes are not one-time pads.

The Brits had the Typex, a rotor machine that was similar to the Enigma.

The NSA has pictures of these machines on their web page.

I can tell you several things that the NSA does/has done.

They sponsor a mathematics competition (the USAMTS) for high-school students.

They helped design the DES algorithm, specifying components (I think it was the S-boxes specifically) in such a way to protect DES against differential and logarithmic attacks. Public cryptanalysis didn't develop these attack techniques until well after DES was released.

They do a lot of crytographic research, and a lot of research in mathematics in general.

They also have a very informative web page (unlike Transmeta's) which tells about several more of thier activities.

The NSA isn't some mysterious organization that never gives out any information. It just happens that most of the information that they collect is sensitive, and can't be public. But what they do is no big secret, it's just the results of thier activities that have to be hidden.

That's my $.02

WHEW! Was that a run-on sentence or what? :-)

Honestly, I'm not able to say much about my job (duh) but if you look at the NSA homepage and look at the DLI homepage you'll find out enough that most folks can put together the rest.

"Providing and protecting vital information through cryptology"

Does anyone else find that ironic & hypocritcal?

Even if these folks had the compilers that would allow you to take large chunks of code, convert it into a hardware representation and program the FPGA to execute it you still have to get have some DATA to feed the instruction stream! The only people that seem to understand true parallel programming models seem to be the people at Tera Computer). They have the only architecture that can do a context switch on each instruction to allow the processors to execute those instructions that happen to be executable because the operand data fetches are complete. Everyone else (Compaq(DEC), Intel, AMD, Sun, SGI, etc.) consume huge amounts of chip real estate with primary & secondary caches rather than really solving the problem of memory latency. The old CPU/Cache IS DEAD in the long run (the chips get too hot). What will work are architectures like Tera's and/or approaches like " Processor in Memory"/" Intelligent RAM"/" Embedded DRAM" that are innovative ways of dealing with the problem of operand latency and memory bandwidth.

Some people dismiss news like this as being made up by loony conspiracy-theorists. Sure, a lot of the stuff you hear about the NSA is not true, but you'd be fool to claim that it's all BS.

The NSA budget is estimated to be around 5 billion USD - that buys a shitload hardware and bandwith, i bet the not all of that bandwith is used for reading /. and viewing porn. NSA employs ten's of thousands of people (35000-50000), i bet they aren't all gardeners.

Here a couple of excerpts from the NSA's about-page
- "It is said that NSA is one of the largest employers of mathematicians in the United States and perhaps the world. Mathematicians at NSA contribute directly to the two missions of the Agency: they help design cipher systems that will protect the integrity of U.S. information systems while others search for weaknesses in adversaries' codes."
- "The NSA/CSS is responsible for the centralized coordination, direction, and performance of highly specialized technical functions in support of U.S. Government activities to protect U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information."

Now, what do you think the NSA does?