Ask The NSA About Certain Things

Last week, my brother Stephen and I make a pilgrimage to a museum most people have never heard about, at the agency that until not many years ago (Thanks, Ollie!) no one had heard about, at least on the record. It's the National Cryptologic Museum -- part of the National Security Agency, naturally -- located off scenic Route 32 in Ft. Meade, Maryland, and worth a visit. However, the museum has a better-than-average Web presence for a government program, probably because it is in large part a volunteer effort. Nonetheless, it is probably one of the world's greatest public collections of information and artifacts about codes and codebreaking, eavesdropping and counter-eavesdropping.

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?

Comments

My NSA question:

[Hrunting]

Where'd I leave my keys?

National Security

[rockwall]

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

Code talkers

[11223]

Every once in a while, a new approach to cryptography like the code talkers comes up - something that returns cryptography to its roots, which is really a mapping between a source set and a destination set. However, the japanese had modest success decrypting the code talkers before new words for letters were added. With time and computer technology, it's probable that they could have succeded in breaking the whole code.

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?

NSA Museum

[__aapbgd5977]

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."

Contributions to Public Knowledge.

[rockwall]

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

Hiring practices

[Uruk]

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?

Echelon

[blameless]

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?

Autonomy

[rockwall]

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)?

Other things of interest?

[evanbd]

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?

---

In all seriousness

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

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!

I've heard the NSA funds stuff.

[Ex Machina]

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?

US tour?

[Mark F. Komarinski]

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.

Monitoring public figures

[Grab]

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.

years ahead

[wishus]

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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Public use of encryption

[gully42]

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

what does it take to work for the NSA?

[moller]

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

Going more public

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you can't answer all the questions I'd like to have answered... So here is one that I hope you will answer. The NSA employs thousands and thousands of people who's job has an impact on the world that most of us will never know or fully understand. (They may not know of fully understand it) They are unsung heros. Do you think that the agency as a whole (the overall morale) would enjoy having a novel or movie that told those stories even if it meant revealing some of the capabilities of the agency? Is it something you ever think would happen?

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?

I forgot my password.

[haystor]

I forgot the password to my dialup account, and I was wondering if you could email it to me.

Something(s) really cool....

[moonboy]

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?

why a museum at NSA at all?

[Kevin T.]

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?

Why?

[locutus074]

Why does the museum exist? It was apparent for a long while that that the NSA preferred to remain unknown -- why the change of heart now? Is this a public relations move on the part of the NSA since it's now determined to actually exist :), an act of goodwill, or some other reason?

Thanks.

--

Question

[/]

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.

Re:What do you know about Canada?

[locust]

We have CSIS, the Canadain Security Inteligence Service. They come up every once in a while, when they loose a briefcase full of secrets or something.

--locust

Read the FAQ

[crackmonkey]

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).

History of Cryto

[Zachary Kessin]

It seems that before the 20th century cryptography was very much an art and at some point it more or less turned into a science. I was wondering if you could elaberate on how and when that change was made. IE when did the math folks take over? And was it during or around WWII.

The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

Gridlock

[vees]

In this breaking news, MD 295 and Route 32 in Maryland have been jammed solid for the past three days as a backlog of tens of thousands of visitors to the National Cryptologic Museum are waiting to access the area in what experts are calling the "Slashdot Traffic Effect". More at eleven.

--

Why would I work for you?

[Just Some Guy]

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?

individual freedom vs. nation security

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Crypto Roots & Leaves

[hartsock]

1. Having studied old DES designs in college I have always wondered... exactly what WERE the "S-boxes" originally? I know what most solid state systems model them as, but I'd love to know what the designer's had in mind.
2. How much of what are known as the "classic cyphers" are still relevant to today's cryptographic systems?
3. Most modern cryptographic advancements appear to be number-theoretic in nature, what is the future of purely linguistic approaches?
4. What is the single most important cryptographic advancement (that is not classified) of the last century, and who should we be harolding as the "King or Queen" of 20th century cryptography.
5. What is the NSA's ideal vision for public and international collaboration on the development of cryptographic systems? ie: what does cryptographic utopia look like to the NSA?
6. How has the role of cryptography changed in the last century, how has the NSA effected those changes?
7. What role does the NSA see Cryptography playing for the average citizen in the future? Does the NSA believe that the average person needs to utilize cryptographic technology (beyond it's current embedded uses)?

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 //

Why is the NSA Museum Website so vague?

[fdragon]

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?

--

Number Stations

[^_^x]

Does the NSA have any connection whatsoever with the "number stations" on shortwave radio?

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/n umbers/index.html
http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/%7Eirdial/conet.htm

To be part of The Man, of course!

[roystgnr]

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."

Conspiracy Theories

[mudder]

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?

Why Solaris?

[sumana]

www.nsa.gov is running Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) on Solaris
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:

Failures

[bombadill]

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.

CIA vs NSA

[bluGill]

Both the CIA and NSA have missions of "spying" on other countires. How does your mission differ from the CIA?

The history of history

[jd]

Many other countries have destroyed, for various reasons, a great deal of their cryptographic history. The English destroyed the original Colossus at Bletchley Park, for example.

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.)

NSA and DES

[IdoR]

As far as I remember, it wasn't NSA which invented DES, rather it was IBM. However, the NSA changed some of the coeffecients of the original design and didn't explain why.

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.