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NSA, The Technology Future, and Where It Is
cowmix writes "It was weird watching 60
Minutes II last week when the head of the NSA was complaining that
his organization was totally behind in technology. Further, he told of stories
of the organization's horrible inefficiencies and even went into how at
the first of January 2000 all the computers in the NSA were down for three
days. The thing that really shocked me was seeing pictures of the inside
of one of the NSA headquarters and also SEEING people decoding telephone
conversations.
I didn't know what to make of it."
Damn, I had a good laugh.
"Waaaa... we don't have enough money to keep up with the evil net people who have the audacity to encrypt their e-mails, faxes and even telephone calls!"
All of the NSA's comps went down? Y2K? Strange how we are hearing about this now more than a year later...
Runestar
I am beginning to wonder about the role that the NSA is playing. If they are becoming so open, allowing cameras in, openly admitting to being subjected to serious y2k downtime? Telling their families/neighbors they are part of the organization?
Perhaps this is a diversion from a newer, better agency working behind closed doors. Please let me hope so. If the NSA really had the problems they said I am quite afraid of the problems we may encounter w/China and International terrorists (especially now that we are thinking of arming Taiwan w/missles)
Now, we're supposed to believe that the NSA when they go on national TV and complain about their lack of money? Bullshit! Perhaps if their budget was not classified to begin with, this would warrant looking into. As it stands, I'll take any info from the NSA as the FUD it is.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Suddenly I have a scene from the movie Hackers going through my head. Cereal Killer's monolog (inside Cyberdelia) about Orwell, 1984, and our names going through thousands of computers each day starts ringing in even more true...
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
60 Minutes II? You mean there's enough people who still watch the drivel networks call "news shows" spew on a nightly basis that they're making more of them?
*sigh*
If only they'd been using *nix Beowulf clusters, eh?
NSA: Ce pathogène est sérieux.
It's not the first time we've heard of the Y2k incident... read Body of Secrets by James Bamford. It's an excellent book detailing the entire history of the NSA.
How about someone tells me where I can get something to ENCODE my telephone conversations. I tried it today manually and it's a real bitch to keep saying "Dot-dot-dash-dash-dash". I got sick of that, and then tried ROT-13 in conversation but that was even worse, so I just went back to speaking English.
Surely the terrorists are foreign and so speak foreign languages? Maybe stop employing geeks and get some linguists? It's like, why don't airplane hijackers just get the on the right goddamn plane in the first place like the rest of the people who can READ THE GODDAMN FLIGHT INFORMATION SCREENS.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
The NSA is full of more shit than the christmass turkey. I suppose all their voice recognition systems on echelon are condidered low level technology. NSA can eat shit and die until they stop listening to my phone calls. They just want more money so they can upgrade echelon to peer right through the roof of your house. They won't be satisfied until they can read our minds.
Clearly this is a whitewash, designed to lull the public into complacency. The NSA is a highly-honed machine, and the American public are the victims of a massive hoax.
Spread the word!
It isn't strange that the NSA lacks money to general technology - that Echelon system must have costed a few dead presidents.
~/.sig
It would seem to me that the NSA may benifit from being perceived as behind in technology on several fronts. First it may cause those they monitor to let their guard down, though I cna't imagine anyone with any smarts really falling for that old trick.
Second, and more importantly, it gives them an edge in seeking additional funding. Now I don't know how their funding is approved (does anyone) but I wouldn't be surprised if it has become an issue.
Can we really trust that there is any validity to these statements and what was shown. How would you verify this information.
Be careful about anything said about the NSA. The NSA is one of the departments of hidden activity of the U.S. government.
The NSA has an essentially unlimited amount of money. Citizens of the U.S. are not allowed to know the amount.
Would the NSA spend millions of dollars to engineer an elaborate lie? Yes, it might. We have no way of knowing whether it did.
Hidden activities are anti-democratic. If citizens aren't allowed to know what the government does, how can citizens help govern? Are your tax dollars being spent wisely? You are not allowed to know.
Bush's education improvements were
That is PR to keep the money flowing to the spooks.
You think they are behind?
Dream on hippies.
They have stuff you can only dream about.
So this is the word of the head of the NSA? The same NSA whos very existance was denied until recently? The same NSA who's activities are entirely based around misleading everybody as to their objectives and secretly gathering information on members of the public? The same NSA who invented the concept "secrets and lies" as an actual corporate vision statement??? And we're expected to believe this? Come on, /.! This is what those in the business call "misinformation"!
Here's a three page article which appeared in the Washington Post Magazine about a month ago. More in-depth then the 60 mins one and goes into the some details about the problems facing The Agency in the coming years... Washington Post NSA article
They just want you to think that they're horribly behind the times. They're actually already using quantum decryption, and laughing at your puny 256-bit PGP keys.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Ironically the super spy agency was one of the
few organizations to report a serious Y2K problem.
My aunt works with crypto for The Company. She's amazingly good at avoiding conversation on the topic, but from what I've been able to pick up, the concept of the NSA being a more open, friendly, and underfunded is completely bunk. It's an interesting PR move, though. They must have a reason for saying and doing such things, and I suspect is has to do with gaining the public's trust.
Why would you want things even before going into a conflict.
What kind of idiot encourages that type of behavior?
Most government agencies stink. There's no competition, no possibility of going bankrupt. I think that makes quality control very difficult.
I believe this problem is much MORE pronounced in the national security bureaucracy. People can't be fired without contemplating the security risks. Ineffective people can be concealed, because so much is concealed. Old boys networks can flourish unchecked. The degree of public accountability is essentially nil.
I know NSA has a lot of bright people, but they must also have more deadwood than the coast of Maine.
Reread the parent post and tell me someone would actually say this without trying to be inflamatory.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
SEEING people decoding telephone conversations.
Does 60 Minutes have this online? Or maybe is there a shot of this occurring? Thanks
"Oh, yes, we at the NSA are sooo behinf the times (Dammit, bob, hide those E10K's under your desk! the reporters are coming! Yes, you'll have to pretend to fare with "crappy" 1.4Ghz dual Athlons..) and, as such, we should.. um.. get more funding. Oh yeah, and we suck, and our computers crash all the time, so people don't *need* to encrypt their stuff, because we couldn't read it anyways, right? Ha ha ha... Oh, and the reaon we're suddenly saying all of this is that.. uh.. times change, and the NSA must go public. Yeah, that's it! Coming soon to NASDAQ: ticker NSA!"
There is a cycle: 1) The U.S. government influences other governments in hidden ways, including arranging the killing of foreign leaders. 2) Some members of the countries with whom the U.S. has interfered want to retaliate violently to the violence of the U.S. 3) The U.S. uses the violent retaliation as a justification for more hidden activity.
Secrecy is incompatible with democracy.
Bush's education improvements were
I dunno what is going on at the NSA, but I know that the people from the NSA aren't gonna tell you the truth about it. The notion that this could be even remotely truthful is rediculous; an agency charged with intelligence gathering on all foreign soil admits publicly that it's out of shape, underfunded, and vulnerable? Yeah, sure, I believe that. I'd sooner bet my life savings on the theory that somewhere sits a document detailing counterintelligence plans to spread propaganda like this for the simple purposes of winning a bigger budget or deceiving foreign targets.
has some cool stuff about crypto invloving the NSA.
The NSA probably is behind... way behind. I've worked on several government projects (none classified or anything though) and they've all been way behind the times. Why do you think there was such a big call for legacy programmers a few years back? And why do you think there isn't anymore? Did they just all of a sudden get everything up to date? No... They quit.
Also, the NSA has been really trying hard to get new young faces in their information security departments. They've even gone so far as offering dot-com competitive salaries and benefits to their programmers and systems people.
Besides, they're not gods. They're just people like you or me, and it's just a 'company' like any other. Why couldn't they be having some financial difficulties? Sure, we pay tons of taxes, but the government is more interested in feeding bums and helping other nations than protecting our country.
Really? The NSA is woefully behind in technology? I can't prove that any of these supercomputers went to the NSA but looking at this list, the government now owns at least seven of the top five-hundred supercomputers. Most of these are in the top 200 and all were bought in the past four years. Note the computer's uses are classified so who knows if the NSA got them or all went to the FBI and CIA.
So quickly do people jump to conlusions, maybe you should look who is doing the report??? Remeber this report is being done by the mainstream press who always edits there reports to mislead the public in to believing what they feel the public should believe.
4 3109
If you would truely like to know what is going on with NSA try reading James Bamford's latest book, Body of Secrets. He's newest book is based on more fact than rumor, as oppesed to his previous books, this is because he was given access to NSA prior to writting the new book. Also try watching the Histroy Channel's unbiased look, you can buy the video at: http://store.aetv.com/html/catalog/vp02.jhtml?id=
There was an article in the Post last month that had an interview with the current head of the NSA that basically said the same things. While the NSA my have some of the same problems that other government agencies have, some of their claims are not exactly true. I have 2 friends with some knowledge on the subject. The first was with the NSA during the early 70's at an NSA base in a country that "America wasn't at." The second is online currently at Ft. Meade. Both will tell you that the technology used is truly amazing and that money is not much of an issue. All workstations get replaced roughly yearly. In closing, I don't think the NSA is the big bad agency that most people make them out to be. After all, there is a shred of patriotism left in America and I'd like to think that that the fine individuals employed with the National Security Agency are a corner post of this patriotism.
Keep Austin Weird!
Where are the Lone Gunmen when you really need them?
$0.02 (CDN)
Jeremiah
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
NSA used to be a very slow-moving organization, and probably still is. That worked fine when the enemy was the USSR, which moved even slower. In the Cold War days, vast efforts were expended on trying to figure out who was really in charge of what at the Kremlin, how accurate Soviet missiles really were, and other slow-changing bits of information.
The threats today are generally below the superpower level, but above the law enforcement level. Small wars, terrorist organizations, warlords, drug lords, and similar troubles are what today's national security apparatus worries about. NSA never really was geared for threats like that. NSA's collection assets tended to be in fixed locations, aimed at fixed targets.
An inflexible, ponderous NSA aimed at the USSR wasn't much of a threat to Americans. NSA used to routinely brush off requests from law enforcement, for which they've been criticized in Congress. NSA's position was that disclosing anything to law enforcement would jeopardize their collection capabilities.
A modernized, flexible, responsive NSA, working closely with law enforcement, is much more of a Big Brother organization. NSA needs more public scrutiny than during the Cold War. This is true of the intelligence agencies generally, especially with the loosening of restrictions on the use of DoD assets for law enforcement.
This will be more of an issue as the recession deepens and protests against the Administration rise.
The story of the Hall Walkers has been around for years: my only experience with No Such Agency was in teaching a pilot course for them: they were switching from Unix to Windows NT, if you can believe it, and the follow-on training courses are still ongoing: I only finished teaching the pilot course 15 months ago. . .
I'm HOPING all of this is a cover story. . .
. . .the Lone Gunmen got Cancelled ?? Hmmm ???
somehow I think that "behind" really means that they can't decrypt all the traffic in less than 5 minutes. See they rely on being a large factor higher in technology then the public is. So if we are using super computers they need quantum computers so that they always maintain a lead compared to the general population. Furthurmore thier purpose is to supply information out to the various government organizations that require it for thier mission. So like the DEA might need information on a drug lord or, the FBI might need information on something else. They are kinda like information brokers for the government.
If you guys have not been paying attention for the last year (Its ok.....), they do this EVERY year.... Last year's slashdot post on the NSA needing more money refrenced a previous year's post. Come on....
-I could be working but my tax has run out.
Bullshit warning: I'm about to pull a lot of numbers out my ass. I hope to be semi-reasonable and conservative, but it's guesswork nonetheless.
Let's suppose for the sake of argument the NSA can in fact intercept any transmission and beyond that can convert any spoken words in any language to flawless text.
5 minutes of phone time per person per day worldwide
6 billion people
at least 1 word every 3 seconds
2 people in the typical conversation
8 character average word length (w/ space)
= 2.4 Terabytes per day
200 important daily newspapers
50,000 words per issue
= 80 Mbytes per day
5,000 magazines / periodicals
median time of 2 weeks
100 pages on average
average 400 words per page
= 114 Mbytes per day
15,000 worldwide radio stations
35% of time is spoken
1 word every 2 seconds in spoken segments
= 1.8 Gigabytes
7 million new webpages a day (source)
10k average size
= 70 Gigabytes per day
500 million email users
average 0.5 email sent per user per day
18k average email size (source)
= 4.5 Terabytes per day
Total = 7 Terabytes per day
If the NSA really were out to track everything, suffice it to say, it's one monster of a computer engineering problem. We are generating more information than ever and don't have the same kinds of well defined enemies. And how many actual analysts are required to make any sense of all that? Is it any wonder they might be falling behind?
Of course I'm sure there are lots of sources of information, such as TV, that I haven't even covered.
One of the nicest people I've ever known works for NSA crypto and loves his job. Won't talk about much more than that though.
can you say snowjob?
Oh, yes and it gets way better.. from the FAQ..
Aw.. poor NSA only gets $26 Billion dollars. It's only the equivalent to a Fortune 50 company. Yeah.. I'm sure its technology is _ancient_.
You know.. we don't actually know jack about our defense capablities I don't think. Of course, if we did then our enemies would also, and they wouldn't be nearly as effective. For example, living in St. Louis, I was talking to someone from Boeing and mentioned how they must not too happy that their missile tests failed. He just laughed and said he couldn't talk about it's classified. Makes you wonder if maybe he was inferring that those public tests don't totally represent the actually success of the projects...
Actually, today the NSA is being less involved in any surveillance related to the internet. They no longer maintain the echelon systems. Under the Clinton administration, there was a new agency assigned for this task, the SCS. I think many ex-NSA employees were just changing to the SCS. The reason for doing so is that they can continue to deny the existance of their primary surveillance agency that way.
:)
Try this link for a lot more details..
Oh, and don't forget, Oct 21st, is this years "flood echelon" day...
http://www.invalidchars.com go there instead, I'm sure its much better
Of course they weren't really decoding anything real! They were just going through the motions, but processing "dummy traffic". Everything that NSA does is done on a need-to-know basis. Everything was sanitized, and there were red flashing lights everywhere indicating that persons without the necessary need-to-know were on the premises. Everything is "compartmented", meaning that just because you have a top secret security clearance doesn't mean you're authorized to see everything that's top secret. Even if something is officially unclassified, if you have no need-to-know, to you it is considered top secret.
When I was in the Army Signal Corps, I would occasionally have to enter communication centers to maintain the communications equipment, and despite having had a TS clearance at the time, everything was sanitized before I got there, meaning all sensitive items were either squirreled away or otherwise covered. And when the base commanding general visited my office, we had to stop what we were doing and lock our work in a vault and look busy doing something else, usually practicing what they called common task training; i.e. map reading or identifying friend or foe aircraft, the sort of stuff learned in boot camp, or even doing something mundane like polishing the floors. It was the job of the commander to brief the general on what we really do.
I saw a documentary on the NSA's main DECLASSIFIED
decryption computer. It is HUGE. It can decode 74 QUADRILLION (10^15) keys a second. Big Brother IS watching. Just remember that.
Their main DECLASSIFIED R&D lab is well below ground and surrounded by 50ft. of conrete to eliminate minor seismic disturbances. They also use GOLD in their circuits, not aluminum or copper, GOLD. The dust content in the air is below 10 parts per million.
Remember the F117A Nighthawk is over 30 years old and is still undectable without a system failure.
Whatever they have now is way ahead of whatever we have seen so far.
The article says the pulp from recycled secret documents is often sold to tissue manufacturers. ROFL! The saying "Wipe thine ass with what is written" has just gotten even funnier!
... a Beowulf cluster of NSA employees decrypting messages?
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
You are correct. The NRO has a huge budget and are almost unknown to the American public.
the NSA is violating the DMCA, that's why they ain't got no $$$ ;-)
on the other hand, gimme a SSL port to my phone.
Don't quote me on this.
Considering the comments made in the mentioned article it is quite fun looking at NSA's carrers page. Especially the Computer Science section. The job description available to Computer/Electrical Engineers is also quite amusing.
at http://www.nsa.gov/programs/employ/index.html you also get the sidebar with job descriptions in Cryptoanalysis (code breaking), Foreign Languages, etc.
There's a guy I talk with on IRC, who usually has
something interesting or humorous to say in his
quit message. One day it was:
"The NSA is always looking for hot new talent, and
fresh young faces. To learn more about the
exciting career opportunities within the NSA,
just pick up your phone and ask the dialtone."
The story had the following opinions shaped into the ignorant masses:
1) encryption is a tool for terrorists and anti-government wackos
2) intelligence agencies are the good guys
3) there is nothing ethically wrong with 'democratic' governments spying on their own citizens
How much computing power do you need to brute force solve every 128 bit encrypted data stream in the world, every day in near real time? How much computing power do you need to pattern match and keyword search every data stream in the world every day in near real time? And oh yeah - do it in a hundred languages including all the DBCS.
They obviously have programmers working on the security enhanced linux kernel and all these other little tiny projects the NSA people get that are cool.. Military Intel doesn't get to do all that cool stuff they leave it to shit like DARPA.. I'll believe the NSA is behind in the times, technology etc when George W. Bush say's something like "I'm switching parties to Democrat". Or when Satan himself is wearing a ski outfit. This is typical.. we suck, we are trying hard to keep everything together so they can get more cool toys. Like all units of DoD do this time of yr.
/. needs to have a side bar you can put on your customized front page letting geeks know things of interest coming up on telivision.
The existence of the NSA has been acknowledged since 1957 or so, about five years after it was created. There are sci-fi stories written in '84 that talk about the NSA, so it's not like no-one's known about this. The fact that the director of the NSA is even talking on television shows that the Agency is a hell of a lot more open about what it does than it used to be ... try visiting their webpage sometime. About the rest of what you say, I have no idea how to even begin addressing it. All you're doing is repeating popular statements and not backing it up. If you can't prove what you're saying any better than "but EVERYONE knows it's true!", I find myself forced to ignore you.
> Aw.. poor NSA only gets $26 Billion dollars
Read your citation again. The NSA is *one segment* of the intelligence funding group. From the same page:
There are 13 federal organizations in the Intelligence Community. They
are:
National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS);
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA);
National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA);
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA);
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO);
Department of Energy (DoE);
Army Intelligence;
Air Force Intelligence;
Navy Intelligence;
Marine Corps Intelligence;
Department of Treasury;
The $26 billion would have been split among the intelligence activities of all 13 of these groups.
Visit the
Perhaps your forget that the NSA and CIA are agencies designed to keep their activities hidden. Lying is not only acceptable to them, it is encouraged. Do you think that they disclose everything to the elected officials? I think they don't.
I think the elected officials are very busy, and don't have the time to comprehend what the NSA is doing.
Also, this is my guess: I guess that there is not one elected official who understands the technology the NSA uses. If you know of a technically knowledgeable congressman or senator, please tell me who that is. These are the same people who gave us the DMCA!
Bush's education improvements were
It looks to me like the NSA is fishing for new hires. Let me explain. Every post here seems to be extrememly paranoid about the NSA. "Don't trust them. They're massively powerful. They're trying to trick us." But Slashdot represents a fair slice of the technophile community. If all the geeks fear the NSA, then who is working for them? I think the Good Will Hunting monologue is a fair representation of how most intelligent people feel about the NSA. The NSA needs geniuses to work for them, but the geniuses will have none of it. The NSA is nothing if it doesn't have great minds working for it, so I really have no doubt that it is waning in power. If it loses smart people, it produces fewer results and suddenly it is less necessary, and less funded, etc., etc.
So, it seems to me that they have changed their strategy in an attempt to become more attractive to the people they want to hire. They got burned on their whole attempt to regulate cryptography, and managed to alienate everyone who believes in freedom of inquiry in the process. Maybe they've realized that they can't rely on secrecy anymore, because it doesn't work, and have decided they need to stay ahead technologically. And in order to do this, they need smart people, and in order to get these people, they have to be open and trusted by the public.
In the end, the only thing the NSA is about is National Security. They have a history of being sneaky and untrustworthy and classified, but if they finally realize that it doesn't help national security to be that way, then why wouldn't they change? In government agencies, old habits die hard, but the other thing that dies hard is government agencies. If they get pushed into a corner (which I think they have been by the availability of good public cryptography tools), then I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly did a policy 180. And I think that would be a good thing.
Feel free to disagree =)
NSA got a bad rap because it was so secret. In modern times, good cryptography doesn't require so much secretness because it is generally all about yoru computation power and not your ability to steal captain crunch decoder rings from the enemy. It aslo got a bad rap because legislative oversight was sorta bypassed decades ago. The NSA has been looking for a friendlier image to couterract all of the bad publicity that they got. It can't function effectively if people don't trust it, especially in a day and age where NATIONAL SECURITY means that the people of that nation have to practice it too in order to be effective at all. NSA phone taps are all done perfectly legally, we all know that the police station has equipment, and have even seen them use it, why should we be surprised to see the NSA doing it? Remember, these people aren't clandestine agents who require anonymity to function. They're professors, who just need a good office and a compiler.
-Legion
Attila the Hun actually almost never outnumbered his opponents. He won using carefully-crafted deception plans and sheer terror to demoralize his enemies.
The Allies were able to intercept and decrypt a huge chunk of Nazi messages throughout WWII as a result of their ongoing effort to crack Enigma. These decrypts probably shortened the war in Europe by months if not years, but they had to use the intercepts wisely, so as not to tip off the Germans.
During the 1950s, the Russians talked about atomic bombs 'rolling off the assembly lines like sausages', when they actually had a very limited stockpile.
The point is that sometimes you deceive your enemy into thinking that you're stronger than you are, and at other times you make them think you're weaker than you actually are.
Intelligence agencies are any nation's first and last line of defense. They're the ones that tip off leaders about potential dangers, well before they surface on CNN or in the pages of the Washington Times. They're also the ones who can provide the necessary misdirection so that critical programs are not detected by the intelligence resources of other nations.
Case in point: The F-117 Stealth Fighter. Remember when Testor's came out with a plastic model of what they thought the Stealth looked like? The Pentagon freaked out on Testor's and tried to keep them from selling the model kit. Of course, when it was revealed a few years later that an F-117 group had actually been flying *operationally* for several years, and that the Stealth fighter looked nothing like the model, we could all see the depth of the deception effort.
If the NSA releases its doors to the television cameras, *particularly* to 60 Minutes (which has a long history of not having a clue about defense-related matters), it's part of an extensive deception plan.
They're just doing their job.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
not to nitpick, but why does slashdot's version of the U.S. flag only have 12 stripes?
Another comment: Democracy depends on citizens being able to discover if the elected officials are doing a good job. When agencies of the government are allowed to be secretive, we have no way of holding them accountable. We have no way of knowing whether we should vote for an elected official, because we have no way of knowing what he or she did when working in secrecy.
I don't know if the NSA is doing a good job. You don't know that, either. And, neither of us have any way of collecting accurate information, so that we could form an opinion.
U.S. government agencies have, in the past, admitted to arranging the killing of foreign leaders. If that is their history, certainly morality won't stop them from committing any crime, or publishing any lie.
Bush's education improvements were
I'd believe the part about some of their tech being behind the times.
Tempest workstations are costly, clunky, and a few years behind the state of the art. The time and effort required for certification is long!
The certification is real fun. You give them the equipment and get back either a pass or fail. No indication as to why it failed. Guess, fix and try, try again. Happy happy joy joy!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not to say that they're the devil, but remember the devil's greatest trick?
There are a lot of people in Jail. Around 2 million Americans are currently in jail.
Reference Mother Jones. For a starting place, I recommend reading "How we got to 2 Million".
I'm not endorsing this. I hate it.
We put people in prison because someone is making money off of it. Be it via the people who build the prisons, or those who run them (Private for-profit prisons!).
Remember, this is America... profit IS the bottom line. We lead the world economy for a reason.
I too have a hard time believing that the NSA's top guy is suddenly coming out. On the other hand, his point about the NSA growing up in one world and now being at a loss with how to cope with the current reality is very legitimate; they're no different, in terms of organizational dynamics, than a large corporation.
It bears watching, but part of me remains a skeptic, and I sure as hell hope things aren't as screwed up at that level as portrayed.
NSA is the single largest employer in Anne Arundel County and one of the largest in the state of Maryland.
NSA is the Baltimore Gas Electric (BGE) company's 2nd largest customer, and the 2nd largest user of electrical power in Maryland. NSA's yearly electrical bill is more than $21 million.
Kinda interesting,..NSA=No Such Agency Therefore, I guess they don't have a budget either.
That's enough for the pundits, flamebaiters, intell people, hackers, internet guerilla south american communist, etc. I just hope they can't watch me typing this out, oh man, they got me!!!
-"he's just this guy, you know"
What people don't realize is that the NSA is more than just what it seems. All COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) technology that is being considered for use in most any part of the gov't/DoD has to be evaluated by these people, and this process is just a very long one at that. At the rate of new stuff coming out, there is a reason why they don't have the funding that they really do need.
Why do normal people laugh at the gov't when they just announce that they are switching to a "new" technology, when in reality it's been out in public for some time. It's the same reason as above...they have to make sure that it fits all the standards to become FIPS compliant for the specified level that they want it at.
Also, quite a bit of technology is in house also, and that requires a really big chunk of money as well.
Of course, another big chunk is the "black" stuff that most people picture the gov't (or just NSA) to be.
Free the mallocs.
seeing it on T.V., openly discussing it, and knowning it exists is the first step for the NSA to be accepted. Desensitize the public, put positive spin on it (we fight crime and terrorist.) then continue to secretly snoop. Mean while the public is not so critical of the NSA and there sneaky objectives. NSA lobbies for more money.....and gets it. It is all about raising awareness of our good friend the NSA.
Just an everyday guy....nothing special
i wonder if everytime someone use letters NSA in this thread that some NSA drones computer lights up.
I don't know how big I am on hyper-national security, but I do think it plays a role. The best way to avoid terrorism is to stop being an asshole country, but until that happens, the NSA is going to have to continue to do what it does.
I think it's funny, though, that as the agency that is supposed to be the best and brightest begins to fall behind the curve, Congress is writing laws criminalizing the act of decryption, pushing underground a very important segment of our intellectual community. The fact that the DMCA seeks to imprison people who are clever enough to break encryption means our ability to do this when it's important is going to be diminished. I'm not saying the Dmitry is the only hope for US national security, but the precedence that his case is setting paints a bleak picture for the United States. This country will fail if it continues on this course.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Of course this is a hoax. Anyone can see that. To suggest it's for disinformation purposes is also, clearly a hoax. Strange loops have 3 layers, kids, and at the bottom of the barrel we have what? What could possibly motivate the NSA if gaining sympathy/funding or sandbagging the opposition are both out?
Well? What have they accomplished? What outcome could they desire and predict?
A SLASHDOT DISCUSSION!!!
They're polling us, don't you see?
Now they know what we think, how many of us don't trust them, how many do. They know what we fear (quantum decryption), they have a stack of numbers we guess apply to them... We've just told them everything they might want to know about how we see them!! This story is a giant troll!!! On top of them getting feedback, we're also spreading FUD everywhich way... lots of speculation and rumour, nothing else.
Don't swing at the low ones, okay?
That you live in a Police State. Get used to it, your freedoms exists at the wim of the Corporate State.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I should have also mentioned that once a box is Tempest certified, you aren't allowed to change a single part of it.
.. organization .. wants a network card added to the configuration, recertify. (And it opens up a whole Orange Book can of worms, as well as the existing Red Book can. And those are much bigger than any can of whupass.)
...)
If you change the video card because the old one is no longer available, recertify. If you change the supplier of memory chips, recertify. If some
Oh yes, and all suppliers have to be carefully documented, and probably who was working on their production line that day. This can add a hell of a lot to the price of the items because all that paperwork costs!
This is how we get $500 hammers sold to the government. It probably did cost $500 to document all the crap to government specs. ("Where was the ore for this hammer obtained?" "Where did the wood for the handle come from?" "Please document the smelting process to ISO 9001 standards"
I really wonder what will happen when this mind-set rams into open software?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
PKK
IRA
bomb the President
anarchist
17 November
Abu Sayyaf GroupAbu Sayyaf Group
Harakat ul-Mujahideen
Hezbollah
Rote Armee Fraktion
If you're not doing anything wrong then you don't have anything to worry about. Remember the NSA is here to help you! :-P
Who the fsck is this Devil guy?
I would be very happy to believe that the NSA is doing good work if I had evidence of that. But the point is, I don't know if they are, and you don't either, and neither of us can gather accurate information.
Definition of a terrorist: The other country's CIA.
The U.S. has bombed 13 countries in the past 30 years. I consider this evidence of a lack of social skills in relating to other people. The system, whatever it is, isn't working, and you and I don't have any way of discovering why, or changing anything. Our role is only to pay.
Bush's education improvements were
Back in high school I read a fiction book by Steven Coonts called the Minotaur. The book was about a high placed mole within the American government feeding information to the Soviets. The whole concept was to feed the Soviets "actual" information about our defense capabilities to get them to move and upgrade certain parts of their defense and essentially give up hope of trying to win.
I thought this was an interesting concept so I started to do a little researching. During the Cold War the Soviets employed a VAST array of missle and radar techonolgy throughout the country in order to combat the bomber threat of a US nuclear strike headed by B-1bs, B-2s, A-10s, and F-117a's and other airborne flight systems including going after AWACS aircraft guiding all these weapon systems.
In the end though the Soviets left the oceans open. This is where America truly deployed its nuclear defense arsenal as opposed to ground and air-based systems. The "boomers" Ohio-class and the nuclear-powered Los Angeles and enhanced LA "hunter-killers" versus an aging fleet of Soviet subs gave the US defacto reign underneath the water. Whereas the U.S. was able to track Soviet Typhoon (boomers) class subs, the Soviets could never track the Ohios with any consistency during the Cold War (if at all) due to its silent operation and sound dampening technologies.
So what do we learn. Sometimes you can divulge information that is factual to mask your true intentions. Using a truth to cover up another truth. The Soviets were scared enough of the B-1B with its ability to go supersonic and a big payload, also they much have known about the B-2 and F-117a's before the public did, why else would you invest that heavily in radar and missle technology. I won't say it all happened this way but it sure falls into place and makes a lot of sense.
Here's something for you to chew on boy genius. Let's say indeed someone launched 100 nuclear warheads at the US and we shot down 99 of them but one got through but through faulty upkeep didn't explode. I bet you would be pretty damn happy then wouldn't you. The world is a very ugly and dirty place. There are MANY people and countries who hate the United States for a number of different reasons. Why did Saddam Hussein not ever launch chemical warheads at Israel during the Gulf War? He knew if he did Israel would fire nukes right back at him.
Personally, I hope we never have to goto war. I don't feel its a good way to solve anything but extremists and irrational people don't responsd to logic and sometimes it takes a good-old-fashioned buttkicking to get it through there heads, ie Saddam Hussein. However there are a special breed of people who don't think about consequences of their actions and are willing to die for their cause. Do you believe a full reactionary nuclear strike from the United States is going to deter someone who has a deathwish and willing to die and take all the country's people with him/her? Of course not, because their willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. There lies the fault with MAD it assumes rationality and/or a wanting to live and hold onto power. Saddam was irrational but he was never stupid enough to believe that he wouldn't pay dearly from a nuclear strike. MAD makes sense when you have two superpowers trying to build their influence throughout the world, it doesnt against a dictator with a nuke having a really bad day and genuine hatred of the US so much as to die for it.
HT
NSA gets about 2 trillion dollars a year to run and they can seem to keep up to date. I blame Microsoft! :)
The interview on 60 Minutes was not with the Director of NSA - it was with the ex-director of NSA. How else do you think he got on 60 Minutes?
The current director, General Hayden, has made leaps and bounds in overcoming the beaucracy in the NSA in the recent years.
Things are getting better. It's difficult to create a government organization that's dynamic, flexible and responsive to changing trends in the technological sector. The NSA was at one time, and perhaps will be again.
Democratically elected representatives != Democracy.
US citizens do not live in a democracy (I'm not sure anyone does). You democratically elect you leaders. There is a difference.
If you had , and followed the link provided you would have read that for example Prison population have multiplicated by 4 for the same crime rate as in the 70ties.
You would have read to that increase of population in prison isnt clearly correlated to crime drop meaning it is probably useless.
Not even speaking of "small crime" which is harsher punished.
Score 1 for the post above ? Yes score 1 : Flamebait.
The NSA II has way better technology.
In the US alone, the figures are two billion dollars per year for street crimes whereas there is two hundred billion dollars going into corporate crimes. These figures are for damages done by crime and costs of operating the legal system to handle these sorts of crimes.
If anyone is an ass... I think we've made our point.
As for sending people to jail for commiting crimes... I'll have you know, being born is also a crime that people are sent to jail for.
I worked at the NSA for three years, and left recently enough to have been there for some of the events discussed in the "60 Minutes" story. Disclaimer: When I left the agency, I was disgusted at a personal (they screwed me over), ethical (I have this funny thing about hypocrisy) and professional (mathematics & computer science) level, so take this for what it's worth.
I also signed an agreement when I left saying I would submit anything I wrote about NSA for publication to their public relations office for approval before submitting it, but I seem to have lost their address. Oh well.
One thing I've noticed in a lot of the other responses is a reaction to the apparent contradiction between "they can read everything, everywhere" and "our systems are broken, we need more money or we'll fall apart." In a sense, both things are true, and it illustrates what I think is one of NSA's biggest problems.
Yes, of course, NSA has some amazing technology. But these gee-whiz supercomputers and super-secret devices are like little islands in a sea of technological muck. When you hear about secretaries doing word processing on Crays at NSA, it is not because they have so much excess capacity just lying around, it is because the secretary's desktop unit probably really sucks and she has no other choice. Did the entire network shut down for nearly a week? Yes, I recall going to work one morning and seeing a sign posted on the turnstiles, "Don't log in when you get to your office." While all those brilliant minds were busy with gee-whiz projects (that is, after all, how you get the cash awards and the promotions), the infrastructure was being allowed to rot. After all, what looks better at evaluation time: "I played a small, seemingly insignificant part in making sure that NSA's wide-area network stayed up" or "I created a new system using insert hot technology here that resulted in a insert big percentage here increase in processed traffic against insert country name here, a high priority target"?
That's the big problem I was talking about. NSA does have some really smart people, but their management stinks. I mean, really stinks. It's been referred to as the "Glen Burnie full employment project" (a Baltimore suburb near Ft. Meade). After all, there might be some incentive to go through all the security nonsense (an essentially random process which can't be proven to prevent anything) to get a job there, if you're a techie and you think you might get to play with some neat toys, or if you're a mathematician in a bad academic job market. But if you're a manager, the only way you'll be interested in NSA is if you are really not that talented, but heck, you have an uncle who can probably get you into a pretty good position and you won't have to worry about getting laid off, like you would at the phone company.
So when you hear that the agency's response to some new technology is a hamhanded effort to make it illegal, or at least unexportable, and you ask yourself, "What could they be thinking? They can't be that stupid!" think again.
Another big problem with the NSA, CIA, etc. is an inherent contradiction at the heart of what they do. In the middle of a (supposedly) free society, that is made up of a mixture of cultures from all over the world, you have a bunch of people who do all of their work in secret and steal information from other countries. Okay, maybe they call it "maintaining information on a need-to-know basis" and "intelligence gathering" but we know what the point is here, right? When we're not at war with a country, it's pretty hard to justify doing things to them as an organization that, on a personal level, would be wrong and just creepy. Especially when you might have good neighbors who were born in that country. Or even relatives. Back in the 1960's, when the average engineer was kind of a WASPy dweeb, the contradiction wasn't so apparent. But take a look at the population of any engineering class now. It's way more diverse, and you're simply going to have a harder time justifying the "we're in a constant state of war" line with these people. It just doesn't make sense anymore. And yes, the terrorism that NSA talking heads mention when they're begging for money has something to do with the crap we've dealt people around the world for years. After all, what are Bin Laden and his followers upset about? The US presence in Muslim holy lands. Why are we there? Leftovers from the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. How did he get so powerful? The US backed him against Iran. Why was Iran a big problem? The people who overthrew the Shah hated the US. Why? Because the Shah was a tyrant backed by--who? That's right, the CIA.
This is already too long, but one final thing about NSA listening to your phone conversations. If you're not a US citizen and you're not currently in the US, you're fair game to these people, but you're also probably not very interesting (see the comment about getting cash awards and promotions above). If you are interesting to them for some (possibly nonsensical) reason, that is if listening to you can get some analyst a promotion, there you go. If you are a US citizen, or you are currently residing in the US, then the NSA cannot legally spy on you, and nobody gets promoted if the lawyers aren't happy. But if the FBI develops a (perhaps nonsensical) interest in you, it is not hard to get a warrant for whatever kind of surveillance they want to do, and guess where they get their technology?
Also, this is my guess: I guess that there is not one elected official who understands the technology the NSA uses. If you know of a technically knowledgeable congressman or senator, please tell me who that is. These are the same people who gave us the DMCA!
And whose fault is that? You get the elected officials you elect. You don't like them? Don't vote for them.
I'm not an American, but it seems to me that if you don't like your elected officials, you can turn up and vote for someone else.
I'm sick of the moaning on here that Congress doesn't understand you. Well, participate in the process then. Use democracy, stop moaning about laws passed by democratically elected officals. Don't like a law? Well get it changed the same way everybody else does... Thinking a law is wrong doesn't make you exempt from being subject to the law...
"All war is based on deception" - Sun Tzu, China, about 5000 years ago. I believe that's the person you're supposed to credit for that timeless wisdom.
But seriously, you're right about how these things must be brought into the open. So many crimes are committed by the people who govern us that would never be accepted if people just knew what was going on. So keep up with the bitching =)
This is backwards. The issue is not that the people who run for office don't understand technology. The issue is that, in fact, we can know that the NSA does not receive effective oversight from the senators and congressmen and women. We can know this because we know that none of them are technically knowledgeable.
These considerations are important to everyone on the world, because the NSA spies on everyone in the world. This is NOT just an issue for people in the U.S.
I presume you are Irish or Scottish or British. If your country had a secret technical agency, it would not receive any better oversight than in the U.S. There are politicians, and there are people who are technically knowledgeable, but there are no politicians who are technically knowledgeable.
Secrecy is imcompatible with democracy. The U.S. must find some way of relating to the world besides being sneaky.
One problem with secrecy is that the secret agencies get out of control very quickly. Remember, the NSA spies on YOU. Probably you aren't doing anything that the NSA finds interesting. But the NSA does listen to your telephone conversations.
Bush's education improvements were
It has been reported many times that the budgets of the secret agencies of the U.S. government are hidden in appropriations for other items. You and I certainly have no way of knowing how much money is spent.
The NSA is an agency that is allowed to lie. The secret agencies of the U.S. government are allowed to put mis-information in U.S. newspapers. How can you determine when they are telling the truth? I don't think you can.
There are no laws that effectively govern secret agencies, because what they do is secret. No one can know whether they lived by the law.
The NSA spies on everyone, you, me, and everyone in the world. This is an issue for everyone, not just U.S. citizens. The NSA is an agency that respects no boundaries. The NSA is part of a worldwide secret police force. It is an example of the U.S. emphasis on being adversarial rather than cooperating.
The result has been extremely expensive and devastating. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein become strong, then killed 150,000 Iraqis when he became too strong.
We often hear about secret activities of the U.S. government after it is too late to object. The U.S. supported the killing of president Mossadegh of Iran, and supported an extremely weak man, the Shah. (See Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings), for example.) This provoked a revolution in Iran that was hostile to the U.S. Citizens of the U.S. were kept hostage. The U.S. secret agencies' secret answer to the anti-U.S. sentiment was to support Saddam Hussein of Iraq against Iran.
When executives do things openly they make lots of mistakes, and are sometimes held accountable, usually in a very peaceful way, and often by their own staffs. When executives do things in secret, there is little accountability, and the mistakes can become huge.
Not only did the U.S. kill 150,000 Iraqis, the U.S. killed more than 2,000,000 Vietnamese during its war in Vietnam. As I said in an earlier post, the U.S. has invaded 13 countries in the last 30 years.
Invading countries and killing the residents and destroying their property is not a way of relating I consider socially skilled. Why do the citizens of one country think they can kill the citizens of another? If killing is the answer, can't the U.S. ask a better question?
The interference in the affairs of other countries by the secret U.S. agencies has prompted some people to retaliate. These people who retaliate are called "terrorists" in the U.S. The terrorists make everyone in the U.S. less safe. So, U.S. citizens have, in some ways, gotten less security for the money that they spent.
The violent attitude has spread to the internal police forces in the U.S. When some religious fanatics decided to do stupid things in Waco, Texas, the U.S. government responded by bringing in very violent-minded people. The result was death.
There were people who didn't like the activities of the U.S. police forces in Waco. There were people who were psychologically de-centered by these activities. One of them bombed a U.S. government building in Oklahoma. So then the U.S. government killed him.
Secrecy encourages people not to trust. Violence encourages violence.
Secrecy in government does not work. It should be minimized or eliminated. The main issue here is not whether the NSA sometimes does terrible things, or whether one country should maintain secret police forces (the NSA and CIA and others) in all the other countries. The issue is that we have no way of knowing what secret agencies do. When what they do is wrong, they don't even need to hide their mistakes, because everything is already secret.
There in no intent in this to claim that people in the U.S. are better or worse than people anywhere. The main point is only that huge amounts of money combined with secrecy result in huge mistakes.
Bush's education improvements were
You probably think that your cat is just a normal cat. However, I see right here in your records that your cat is a number 420-3390JX listening device.
*grin*
There is a real issue in this discussion, though: Secrecy corrupts.
Bush's education improvements were
Not precisely true. Americans are generally given the choice between two people to vote for. Two people from two different political parties. Each of the political parties has roughly the same stance on each issue, they only quibble about small details, or outright disagree on things that aren't terribly important to the corporations.
It's called the two-party system, and our laws are specifically designed to encourage it and raise the bar for anyone outside the two established parties. Overall, it's a slight improvement over the Soviet-style one-party system. But not much...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"It's called the two-party system, and our laws are specifically designed to encourage it and raise the bar for anyone outside the two established parties. Overall, it's a slight improvement over the Soviet-style one-party system. But not much..."
Great points... Especially given that the two parties are SO similar in stance, that the differences can be broken down to this: Republicans want the government to grow by 7% and the Democrats by 10%... Any growth in the size of government is an infringement of freedom, so obviously neither party is your friend if you are for civil liberties, as evidenced by the unanimous quasi-secret whitewash that both conspired to pass the DMCA.
Which is why we need a third party. The Libertarians are closest to my actual philosophy, though I don't really favor taking the hands off the corps as they would (though the Libertarians DO oppose laws like the DMCA, which empowers corps at the expense of the Constitution).
The two major parties are so entrenched though, that there is little chance that any third party can seriously threaten the monopoly, especially when you consider that barely HALF the registered (which itself is barely more than HALF the ELIGIBLE voters) will get off their asses and vote.
And of those who do vote (which is roughly 25-33% of the population), the Demopublican machine keeps third parties off the ballots by throwing down HARD requirements that make third parties spend a LOT of their $$$ raised just to get on the ballot, so they may not even SEE another party... Also, there is a convienient "straight ticket" button in many states, further cheapening the process.
It's a bad process, but it's one that exists because the American masses accept it. Unfortunately, things are ultimately up to THEM, not us, so if we are ever going to change things, we need to get busy educating Joe-6-pack.
Generally speaking, it's Joe-6-pack who gets his way, when the masses get upset about something, no matter HOW bad an idea it is (such as medicare perscription drug coverage, something that will throw an already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy system over the edge), they will JUMP all over it...
Why do you think there have been some in Congress who have proposed compulsary licensing, that would force the RIAA to license Napster? It's because a lot of Joe-6-Packs out there are upset that Napster is gone and they can't steal music anymore.
It won't happen, of course, because of the strength of the corporate lobby, but a number of politicos DID jump out there to make themselves look like they "care about this" to placate the restless masses.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment on the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of Chilean General Rene Schneider. The show aired this Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy.
We tend to hear about the activities of secret U.S. government agencies about 30 years after they occur. What are they doing now?
Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:
National Security Archive Chile Documentation Project
PBS News Hour: "... evidence of a policy to undermine democracy in Chile and to support dictatorship there"
Hinchey Report, CIA Activities in Chile
Bush's education improvements were
Don't think so? Imagine that the nazis had wome World War II. Or Stalin won the cold war. The world we live in would look *very* different today. And it is cold hard reality that the NSA spends a lot of money supporting cryptography education. That is money that is supporting cryptography research of all kinds, for everybody, not just Americans . The international scientific community.
Does that tell you something? People who have something constructive to say, should get involved in the debate on the NSA on some level and maybe in a generation or so, we will have something that we can all be proud of..
They need good people with morals and brains, too.
In any case, for right now, I might disagree with much of what they do, but I am glad they exist.
All the NSA is doing is trying to keep it's headstart on it's biggest competitor: the CIA. In it's early days, the NSA was nothing more then a theoretic research lab for wacked out mathematicians that would think of new exciting ways to facilitate the US with secure manners of communications. Later on, it also got the SIGINT (signal intelligence) task on top of that, but wasn't it the CIA that did all the real 'dark' shit during the cold war? What does the CIA do nowadays? And what do the DoD and DoN intelligence offices do? Sit on their asses? No way; there's a real intelligence competition going on, and the NSA knows that when it doesn't jump on the bandwagon, it's gonna miss out on the dough.
Another thing: whatever happened to the MAJI office? I remember that all the heads of the US intelligence offices (CIA, NSA, DoD, DoN, DoE, etc.) had a meeting with the president every now and then...i even remember that this meeting was called 'The Mayestic Agency of Joined Intelligence' (MAJI). If the ways of the NSA are considered 'dark', then MAJI would be a definate black-hole!
My point: An working and functioning intelligence agency never runs out of money, cuz' it's always being backed up by dozens of other agencies that depend on it's existence. The NSA would only go bankrupt when the US govt. would go bankrupt, and even when that happens, they'd prolly start selling drugs in Colombia just to cover expenses (didn't the CIA do that in Vietnam?!?).
And there's always a bigger and darker agency behind the agency...
...that's how intelligence works. Never show them your cards, only let them think you do.
Any director of any Security Agency that thinks otherwise and embraces an 'open doors'-policy, should reconsider whether he's acting in the Agency's best interest: if i had an entire country to protect, and in a way be responsible for thousands (or even millions) of lives, i'd be sneaky and secretive as well. It's the only way to get the advantage over someone that thinks he knows everything about you. And of course, the NSA knows that.
In other words: nice try, but no cigar!