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Ask The NSA About Certain Things
I spoke briefly with museum curator Jack Ingram, and proposed a Slashdot interview. Ingram said that he could not simply answer readers' questions off the cuff, and referred me to the NSA's Public Affairs Office (yes, they do have one). That sounded like the kiss of death, since PAOs in general seem to insert such requests politely into the large circular file.
I was pleasantly surprised when just a few phone calls yielded a polite and helpful public affairs officer (he requested I not use his name) who assented to field questions about the museum holdings from the Slashdot readership and assist in obtaining answers to those which could be answered without compromising national security.
So submit your questions in the space below, about Venona, about the origins of the NSA's version of the Vatican's pornography collection, about The Black Chamber, about The Special Processing Laboratory (in-house silicon fab), the famous code talkers, or other aspects of the history of governmental secrecy.
Moderators and submittors; think of this as a logic game -- since the NSA won't answer questions it considers too sensitive, what kind of questions can be moderated up high enough to send and stand a good chance of being answered?
Where'd I leave my keys?
What, are some of the unsung achievements in cryptography during World War II? We all know about Turing and the Code Talkers, but who are some of the ones that history has glossed over, and what were their efforts during the war?
yours,
john
Now cryptography seems to focus mostly on RSA and other public-key crypto systems. Do you see any future innovations in cryptography, or has the science of cryptography been reduced to nothing but fields and binary relations?
Why is the NSA 'visible' now? They have a public relations office, public museum, web page.. Why is it no longer 'No Such Agency' .. Do we have replacement 'non-visible' agencies that are better at hidding?
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
No questions I can think of, but I highly recommend the museum if you're interested in that sort of thing -- old Crays, one time pads and an Enigma machine you can actually try.
My favorite thing was the newspaper clippings from the museum opening. Apparently, the NSA didn't tell anyone they were opening a museum and actually denied any knowledge of its existence when reporters asked. (Apparently because many former operatives were visiting and they felt publicity might compromise them. Although, I bet there was a lot of simple habit behind it.) So you have all these articles in the Weekend Activities section saying, "We have learned from anonymous government sources that a Museum of Cryptography has opened in Columbia."
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I had a friend who visited an NSA museum in Maryland... he found out about it only because he had a security clearance. You needed the security clearance to get in - and I thought $47 to get into Disneyland was a high admission cost. Is this that same museum, or is there another still-classified museum? Can you tell us about it, in general non-compromising terms? If its the same thing, why has it been de-classified?
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
Obviously, and for very good reason, the NSA employs a great number of skills cryptographers and mathematicians. For equally good reason, the work that they produce and the problems that they solve are of utmost importance to national security, with the unfortunate consequence being that they must be kept secret. Has the NSA ever declassified mathematical or cryptographical information that has contributed significantly to the public body of knowledge? Is such a declassification a possibility for future discoveries or breakthroughs?
yours,
john
I've heard that the NSA is the largest employer of PhD mathematicians in the world.
Is this true?
Also, what type of work goes on at the NSA that will be useful to society and to the scientific community as a whole? I understand there is a lot going on in the name of national defence, but it would be horrible to have all of those ideas locked up forever. How does the NSA go about declassifying ideas to benefit science as a whole? How often has that issue come up?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
What guarantee does the American Public have that agencies such as NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. are not overstepping thier bounds when it comes to our privacy?
In other words, to whom does the NSA answer?
Who's watching the watchers?
Browser? I barely know her!
I've heard that either Canada doesn't have a 'secret service' - or that they're very good at being secret... ;)
BlackNova Traders
by visiting the NSA's Museum, will they use their resources to spam you with NSA-related stuff?
"I visited the National Cryptologic Museum and all I got was this lousy Net Trace"
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
How dependent is the NSA on the outside world? Let me clarify: I see from the story that the NSA maintains an in-house silicon fab. So chip production is something that can be handled internally. What cannot be handled internally? I won't be specific, since I would like this question to be answered, but might a situation arise in which the NSA has to turn to industry or academia for assistance? If so, how would such such an incident be conducted (i.e., in the open, or with NDA's or more drastic measures)?
What, exactly, was the USS Liberty doing near Israel in the first place? Presumably, it was assigned to SIGINT, but who was the subject and why?
www.alarmist.org
Everyone seems interested in cryptography, but cryptography is only part of the problem. What can you tell us about the challenges involved in intercepting (and preventing from being intercepted) messages? Since much of the modern technology for this is presumably classified, perhaps a historical approach to answering this would work best, ie what went on in WWII and the cold war?
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Here is my actual question: "Why can't a public relations officer from the NSA tell me his name?"
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Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I've heard the NSA fund research in stuff it is interested in (crypto, math, high-performance computing). What are the chances the NSA would fund some mutially beneficial open source projects?
Any possibility that some of the items in the NSA collection can go on a tour around the country? Not all of us can make it to MD.
There's a good number of items there including some parts from the U2 shot down over Russia to some enigma machines (at least one) and some other items dating back to the civil war.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Recently there was some trouble in Britain, when it was found that Margaret Thatcher had asked the Canadian government to spy on opposition party members, in exchange for which the British secret services spied on Canadian targets.
I can appreciate scanning for threats such as child pornography (never mind the argument about whether it exists - that's another point), and targetting known criminals or likely suspects. But what is the NSA's policy on monitoring _political_ targets? If asked to bug Newt Gingrich or some other senior politician, would the NSA have the power to refuse? And if it did refuse, would it use another agency (Britain's MI5, for instance) to gather the same information, on a quid pro quo basis?
Grab.
If so, what are those threats, and what technologies / counter-measures would you recommend (pgp, encrypted e-mail, ipv6?), etc?
When I applied for an internship with the NSA, you sent me a brochure that mentioned your computing equipment was "5 years ahead of the civilian computer systems." Historically, has this always been the case? Has there ever been a scientific or engineering feat that brought the civilian computing world ahead of the NSA, if only for a short time?
What was it?
wishus
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As we enter the information age, encrytpion is showing up in general use by the public for conveying information (money, data, ideas, etc.)
What would the NSA recommend to ordinary citizens when using encryption? Do you feel that encryption supports free speech? The economy?
Thanks,
Nick
fortune: You die cold and alone
1) What specific independent elected body oversees your operations -- if any?
2) Are you entirely funded by the US government?
3) What is your total year 2000 budget in dollars?
4) Describe your operations and their intelligence interactions with US citizens vs. non-US citizens.
Every now and then at school (Caltech) we toss around the idea of going to work for the NSA, mainly because we feel it would be a fun, intellectually stimulating environment. (As opposed to a normal engineering job in a large company which can be boring as hell and not challenging in the least.) but I digress...
So what does it take to work for the NSA? Are all of the employees mathematical geniuses? What kind of people do you look for, and do you actively recruit?
On a side note, I'm assuming that a great deal of scientific discoveries are made in the NSA's labs. How many of these discoveries coincide with research being done in the public academic community? Have there been instances where academia has made a discovery, or published a paper, while the NSA has already known that information for years because they discovered it themselves? Is there any collaboration between the mathematicians at the NSA and those in academia? Or is the NSA research body a purely autonomous group?
Moller
The Navy has Topgun and Crimson Tide, and there are numerous movies about Marines and soldiers and pilots. There has been kind of an FBI trend lately with pop items like The X-Files and various movies. Assuming that there is a story to be told (writing proofs on white boards probably doesn't make the cut) would NSA like something like that?
Does the NSA monitor everything (domestic and foreign)? In other words, is the NSA the central organization for monitoring everything that goes on anywhere?
www.alarmist.org
I'm sure a well done cryptology exhibit that toured major museums such as the one nearest me, the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), would probably draw many interested individuals if such a prospect was feasible. I'm not sure how well the exhibits would travel (although many delicate and priceless artifacts travel somehow), if putting together a tour would be too much work, that the NCM has too small of a collection that touring out any part would make it too empty, or any other valid reason against would stop it, but my wishful thinking would like to ask: Will the exhibits ever tour?
I forgot the password to my dialup account, and I was wondering if you could email it to me.
t
What does the NSA think about the current civilian projects using distributed computing to attempt to decrypt high-level encryption? Does the NSA consider the possibility of other nations using similar distributed computing farms to decrypt encoded US traffic a possible threat or is the encryption used by the NSA just too plain strong?
From "Top Ten Reasons to Work for the NSA" -
(yes, there is a page like that..)
Recreation Programs
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NSA has clubs available to people interested in:
Art
Battlegaming
Bible Study
Black Expressions (??!)
Bridge
Ceramics and Handicrafts
Coin/Stamp Collecting
Flying
Gardening
Golf
Magic (!)
Model Airplanes
Photography
Public Speaking ("no comment"...)
Rifles and Pistols
Shortwave Radio
Sign Language
Singing
Skiing
Spanish
Sport Cars
Traveling
WIN (Women and Men in NSA)
Yachting
Organized sports include:
Basketball, Golf, Soccer, Softball, and Tennis.
Other activites and services offered:
Dancing
Library Facilities
Emergency Loan Fund
Recreation Equipment for Loan
NSA employees can also enjoy the use of the facilities of a 20-acre
recreation site with ball fields, picnic tables and grills.
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
What is something really, really cool that you could tell us that we, as civilians, wouldn't think to ask a question about because we, unknowing as we are, think it would so obviously be a threat to national security, that we wouldn't even begin to consider asking a question about, but really isn't that big of a deal? Maybe something that seems so outrageous that we would think it were far too preposterous to be true?
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Why aren't the materials in the NSA museum in the Smithsonian, where they will be more publically available, cared for by professional curators, and not drain valuable NSA resources? What impact does the NSA Public Relations Office intend for the museum to have on public opinion and employee morale?
Thanks.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Moderators and submittors; think of this as a logic game -- since the NSA won't answer questions it considers too sensitive, what kind of questions can be moderated up high enough to send and stand a good chance of being answered?
How's the the cafeteria food? Do you guys have company softball games? When are you planning to get a cool crypto statue like the CIA's? Do I look fat in this? I want your honest answer.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I'd like to hear some recent examples of technologies developed at NSA which were released to the commercial sector. What commercial initiatives has NSA collaborated on recently? (Perhaps, something Al Gore didn't invent?)
...or maybe not.
Wow, I hate to say this, but go read their FAQ first (yes, they have one).
http://www.nsa.gov/about_nsa/faqs_internet.html
No, they can't tell you their exact budget, who works for the, whatever. READ THE FAQ. It covers who they say they're allowed to monitor, etc, and answers about half the other questions people have asked so far.
However, MY question is, what is the screening process for people applying for jobs in the NSA? Can certain parts of someone's background be overlooked? I looked at the FBI's screening process, and I don't make it in there for certain abuses of substances when I was "young and dumb". Anyway, I know I'm not the best around, but I'm considered to be pretty bright and I fit a few of the job categories for the NSA. Could a guy like me make it in anyway? Do I need a degree first?
Does it help that I almost applied to work for the CIA (their college program is pretty nice).
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
What role does the NSA play in advising lawmakers about cryptography exportation? Did the NSA call the shots or simply make recommendations with the recent US government relaxing encryption export regulations?
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
--
Rob Carlson
There was a scandal where RCMP "spooks" burned a barn where purportedly nefarious people were planning ill; the "public" view was that this made the RCMP look bad, and so the RCMP wanted no more to do with the "spooky" activities. When they're the "secret service," who can really be sure???. The public face on this was thus:
See also the CSE Unofficial Web Page, which has a rather interesting discussion of the organization.
They are a mixed civilian/military group largely devoted to "signals analysis," and include pretty much the same functions associated with the NSA, notably not including having their own chip foundries. (Unless there's one hiding somewhere in Labrador!)
Notable "listening" sites include Gander (a formerly notable airport), Alert (the most northerly inhabited place in the world), Masset, and Kingston. My father used to work next door to CSE headquarters, the Sir Leonard Tilley Building.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
As a young-ish programmer, there is a wealth of available job opportunities. As the world's premier intelligence agency, you would of course want to hire the best and brightest stars of the upcoming generation.
My question is simple: why would I want to work for you?
Hot new dot-com startups can offer me incredible stock options. Larger corporations give me a chance at rapid advancement in a stable job. When I think of the NSA, by comparison, I imagine slaving away in a cinder-block room for $30,000, and being a nameless cog in the machine.
Your web site touts the hard-core bleeding edge technology that I would get to work with. While that's an admitted draw, it doesn't overcome the dreary impression that most people have of large goverment agencies.
Does the NSA, or other TLA-agencies for that matter, have incentive programs that would interest the kind of people that you want working for you?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
One of the exhibits shows how fingerprints are identified. And the label on the machine that always scares me says, "Fingerprints are not permanently stored" I wonder how long they consider temporary?
since individual freedom and privacy tend to be contrary to national security , where does the nsa see the as the balance between to two? till what point does national security outway privacy?
My question is: what subjects are we supposed to not ask about?
After making my "pilgramage" the the Crypto museum, I was fascinated to discover the amount of work that the NSA has done with silicon and custom chips. My question then is this: Does the Special Processing Laboratory have set schedule for the release of new silicon technologies, or is it on a "as needed" basis. ie - We all know that Intel shoots to have a new chip on the market every 8ish months. Does the SPL do the same? And if so, what is the average time from algorithm inception by one of your cryptanalysts/cryptographers to final product in silicon?
I'm curious to see how the NSA would answer these questions and what it would package for us as their "official response". I'm also curious if the NSA would answer differently to CNN than it would to slashdot... but I have no way of testing that. It should also be noted that I'm not digging for anything, just making small talk, I seriously doubt they would show a schematic for the new version of DES no matter how benign I was.
--// Hartsock
Live to Code, Code to Live!
This is a marvelous chance to point out:
There's a GI Joe Navajo Code Talker action figure out now, with seven recorded messages in Navajo and english. Get 'em while they last.
( If this is successful, maybe they'll come out with the Alan Turing action figure. Or Lady Lovelace with Camper and Grappling Hook.)
--tangram
I was looking through the NSA website and noticed that everything was rather vague in the descriptions of the exhibits. Why isn't there links to more information on say for example the code talkers or the DF Tractors? Where can more information be found on the exhibits that are in this museum like:
How the items came to the museum?
How were these items developed?
... and what were some of the previous designs?
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The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
Do you guys ever read some of the conspiracy theories about all the evil that goes on at Ft Meade, and just laugh your butts off?
--
Communication is only possible between equals
Does the NSA have any connection whatsoever with the "number stations" on shortwave radio?
n umbers/index.html
If the NSA owns any of these stations, would you be able to give us even a vague idea of what kind of data is carried on them? Even a one-word answer like "names", "words", "images", etc...
Here's where I first heard of them:
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/09/16/
http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/%7Eirdial/conet.htm
Does the NSA, or other TLA-agencies for that matter, have incentive programs that would interest the kind of people that you want working for you?
The chance to uncover and join conspiracies at the very highest levels of our government? C'mon, do you think that "The Man" (also know as "they", "Big Brother", etc.) is immortal? No! Even with the incredible genetic longevity treatments that they won't release to the general public, The Man can only expect to live two, three centuries, tops. They need fresh blood to firmly grasp the puppeteer's strings that our society dances to!
Think about the chicks you could pick up, if you could have their current boyfriends' reputations destroyed with a phone call.
Think about the perks you could be treated to, when you had the inside dirt that The Man's omnipresent surveillance systems have collected on every political and corporate leader in the world!
Sure, you would have to undergo their powerful classified psychotherapy techniques to keep you from revealing The Man's secrets, and to make sure you suicide before cracking under torture. But really, is torture by foreign counteragents really a worry anymore in a world where the Russian mafia is in bed with the NSA and the Chinese Communist party, in a global conspiracy to squeeze control ever tighter around the minds and hearts of men?
And really, wouldn't be worth it, the first time some clueless hippie-wannabe bitches to you that The Man is trying to keep him down, and you get to reply,
"No I'm not."
OK, either your friend filled you full of BS and you bought it, or... well let our imaginations wander.
I went there with my girlfriend and my son. I have a clearance, they don't. Nobody checked our ID or anything. We were in her vehicle so "dreaming" a background check out of the temporary tag number and somehow linking it to me won't work.
Anyway, just go to NSA HQ, make a left, drive past the Shell station (there is one across from the CIA too, as well as one down the road from Station C at Remington?warrinton, VA, go figure), anyway, just past the Shell gas station you will find the museum. Walk in, sign the book or not (I think I signed in as Kevin Mitnick, but don't remember). Walk around, look at the desplays, ask the guides questions, play with an Enigma hands on, have phun!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
What's the most riduculous conspiracy theory that you have heard about yourselves? Is there any particular movie or book that you all laugh at as an inside joke (e.g. Mercury Rising) becuase of the way it misrepresents the NSA?
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host =www.nsa.gov
Why did your webmaster choose to run Apache on Solaris?
That is, unless you're fooling Netcraft, which is a valid possibility...
The Once and Future Cool Site:
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
I interviewed with CSE so I know a bit about them (nothing classified or secret, since ended up taking a different job).
Aside from all the current NSA-type stuff, the CSE is also working on a public-key infrastructure for use by Canadian citizens. I believe this work is being done in partnership with Xcert. Cool stuff...
Is there really such a collection? The only book I saw when I followed the link was on Polygraphy.
I see a lot of questions about NSA and SigInt successes, but what about the failures? For example, one hears a great deal about cracking Enigma during WW2. How about Allied codes during WW2? How successful were the Axis in reading our signals? What methods did they use? Who was generally better at SigInt during WW2 and why? It would also be interesting to hear about any significant US failures during the Cold War.
Both the CIA and NSA have missions of "spying" on other countires. How does your mission differ from the CIA?
Such a discovery, if disclosed to the public, would represent a severe threat to the national security of the United States of America and her citizens. Disclosed only to the National Security Agency, it would be a useful tool in the defense and security of this nation.
What would the proper way to disclose such a discovery to elements of the National Security Agency?
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
Sincerely,
a kind and curious spookette
Actually, a lot of those very unsung heroes were Turing and the work done at Bletchley Park ... it wasn't until the enigma was stolen that a lot of people actually knew what Bletchley was and their (large) contribution to the war effort.
As for another unsung hero, a guy called Ellis who worked at GCHQ in the 50's actually developed public key crypto way before the RSA/Duffie etc. It sometimes helps to look outside the box, the NSA museum is very interesting, however you have to bear in mind these places are extremely jingoistic, there are many other great people (from other countries) that have made massive contributions over the years who haven't received any recognition.
P.S. Don't rely on Hollywood for your history either.
Of those things no longer classified, but no longer in existance, what do you regret most having been destroyed?
Also, a quick follow-up - there are bound to be many things in existance now which simply won't survive, because they're just too sensitive to risk. Does the NSA (and/or museum) have any program to securely isolate those artifacts which are likely to be of historic significance, until they can be safely declassified?
(IMHO, we only have one history. Many possible futures, but there's only one past. If something is lost, that's it. No second chance. Bleeding-edge research is probably one of the most exciting aspect of life in any age, but it's also - by definition - the most likely to be deliberately destroyed, through sheer necessity. IMHO, some kind of archive would be invaluable for the future, but maybe just too expensive for the present.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Until recently there was a very controversial and public web site, crytome available which offered a unique and interesting look inside the world of espionage. Of course, by placing under the public eye so much information they made enemies of the FBI, the CIA, and various foreign intelligence agencies.
Do you know what happened to this site, and to your knowledge was your agency (or any of the other aforementioned agencies) involved in its apparent disappearance from the net?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
30 years down the road, Adi Shamir invented differential cryptoanalysis (a method of attacking crypto systems by 'feeding' them certain inputs and seeing what comes out), and showed how the original design of DES was vulnerable to that method, and that the NSA's changes made DES much less vulnerable.
It was later revealed that NSA had already discovered differential cryptoanalysis in the 60's, and the coeffecient changes were specifically done to protect DES.
I'm an American. I was born in the US (although my parents are from the Dominican Republic), and I love this country.
What can I, as an average (more or less) citizen, do to help my country maintain it's national security?
I'm not a mathematician, or an expert cryptologist, or a wunderkind. I know the NSA has it's recruiting programs and any suficiently qualified individual can apply for a job with you guys, but seeing as I'm not as gifted as you would require me to be before being able to offer me a full time job, what can I do (on my own)?
q
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
I recently looked at a list of patents the NSA had for stuff, and anong the really cool stuff, something very very interesting popped up: Integrated Child Seat for Vehicle. This really piqued my curiosity. Why does the NSA have a patent for a child seat?
Calmacil
I can't seem to face up to the facts, I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax... --Talking Heads
When I was in college (late 70s), we had an NSA recruiting poster up in the computer lab. The graffiti added at the bottom said "You don't need to call us - if you're interested, we already know about you." :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
ZikZak you dumbfuck. It's your life. As you know, the Tribunal meets tomorrow at noon. You're welcome to make a formal appology and suffer only trivial consequenses. However, if you persist in this foolishness, you're not going to wake up on Saturday, dig? You know the deal.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Are there instances when making information public furthers state security
better than keeping it secret?
Just as you probably have large numbers of people devoted to
protecting secrets, do you have people whose role is to promote
the dissemination of information (I mean for non public relations reasons,
for the furthering of state security)
NSA and IBM had a sizable effort to develop high-speed cyrogenic computing components in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Did any usable hardware ever result from that effort? It would be an interesting footnote to computing history if it did.