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NSA Publication Indices Declassified
Schneier is reporting that a 3 year old freedom of information act request has finally come to fruition showing us indices from the NSA Technical Journal, Cryptographic Quarterly, Crytologic Spectrum, and Cryptologic Almanac. From the article: "The request took more than three years for them to process and declassify -- sadly, not atypical -- and during the process they asked if he would accept the indexes in lieu of the tables of contents pages: specifically, the cumulative indices that included all the previous material in the earlier indices. He agreed, and got them last month. Consider these bibliographic tools as stepping stones. If you want an article, send a FOIA request for it. Send a FOIA request for a dozen. There's a lot of stuff here that would help elucidate the early history of the agency and some interesting cryptographic topics."
Am I the only one who doesn't understand what's going on here?
It's kind of disgusting that it takes so long for documents to be declassified and released to the public, but I understand that there is always the imminent threat to national security and these things can't be rushed. I understand why many of these documents simply *cannot* be released to the public, but this indexing is truly whetting me appetite for what I cannot have! I would love to read almost any of the articuals in the NSA Technical Journal, and some articles such as 'BS: Dealing with Beaurocracies' sound quite entertaining. Come on, can you really say that What Every Cryptologist Should Know About Pearl Harbor doesn't make you want to storm the NSA headquarters and grab a few copies?
Sigh, such is life... still, this declassification is the first step to a full release of these documents.
- dshaw
3 years is a long time to wait for "free" information.
A huge part of the effectiveness of FOIA legislation is in knowing what there actually is to ask for in the first place. I can just imagine the flood of new requests they're going to be receiving over the next couple of weeks.
- "The Arithmetic of a Generation Principle for an Electronic Key Generator"
- "CATNIP: Computer Analysis - Target Networks Intercept Probability"
- "Chatter Patterns: A Last Resort"
- "COMINT Satellites - A Space Problem"
- "Computers and Advanced Weapons Systems"
- "Coupon Collecting and Cryptology"
- "Cranks, Nuts, and Screwballs"
- "A Cryptologic Fairy Tale"
- "Don't Be Too Smart"
- "Earliest Applications of the Computer at NSA"
- "Emergency Destruction of Documents"
- "Extraterrestrial Intelligence"
- "The Fallacy of the One-Time-Pad Excuse"
- "GEE WHIZZER"
- "The Gweeks Had a Gwoup for It"
- "How to Visualize a Matrix"
- "Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages"
- "A Mechanical Treatment of Fibonacci Sequences"
- "Q.E.D.- 2 Hours, 41 Minutes"
- "SlGINT Implications of Military Oceanography"
- "Some Problems and Techniques in Bookbreaking"
- "Upgrading Selected US Codes and Ciphers with a Cover and Deception Capability"
- "Weather: Its Role in Communications Intelligence"
- "Worldwide Language Problems at NSA"
* Build a waterboarding setup using common household items!
* Exclusive interview with ECHELON! The Journal: Boxers or Briefs? ECHELON: Beep...beep...
* The top ten things not even the President knows!
* Keith Alexander's Beauty Tips!
* More inside!
No wonder they took over Newspapers
Or you could just join the agency and get access to the full articles. I'm sure they would love to have access to some of the brightest new minds out there.
And in light of this article, I wonder if I could make a FOIA request to get to your coupon book, since it seems we now have a right to get to any information out there.
I'm not TS cleared but just for argument's sake, how does one about getting a subscription to a classified journal? Do they mail it to you? Is it in one of the black pastic bags like my "gentleman's" magazine? Is it an electronic system? Internet? Are the little cards that fall out classified too? Etc etc.
"Boners Wanted"
Congratulations NSA, this journal really good to the people who want the information about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). People can take this journal as a reference of cryptographic topics. Especially for the student who learn about the data security. This journal should be done early, but now still not to late. I hope there is more jurnal will be published by the FOIA.
for the successful FOIA requester?
Use the links to get the indexes... In the by-title list in the B's is a whole series Book Review: (title). I believe most of the books are plain old published books. For anyone interested in the history of this stuff, it's interesting to see what books got enough attention to get reviewed here. I think it could be a very interesting reading list! Of course, we've all read David Kahn's The Codebreakers, right?
"Extraterrestrial Intelligence"
"Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages"
so basicly... Aliens DO exist?
Some titles are obviously encrypted, such as:
"Extraterrestrial Intelligence",
"Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages"
which, when decyphered are:
"IT lie alters electing Rex* in Terrae#",
"Relax, see eager tits stroke thy master"
* Rex = latin for King
# Terrae = latin for Earth
One is obviously describing the manipulation of the electoral process and the other describes the appropriate response.
Fucking mod fucking parent up. Good fucking post. Fuck.
A FOIA request can be made for any agency record. This does not mean, however, that the Department of Justice will disclose all records sought. As noted above, there are statutory exemptions that authorize the withholding of information of a sensitive nature. When the Justice Department does withhold information from you, it ordinarily must specify which exemption of the FOIA permits the withholding. You should be aware that the FOIA does not require agencies to do research for you, to analyze data, to answer written questions, or to create records in order to respond to a request. Although, as discussed immediately below, certain information may be required from a FOIA requester, no special form is required by the Justice Department. Requests must be in writing, either handwritten or typed. While requests may be submitted by fax, most components of the Justice Department have not yet developed the capability to accept FOIA requests submitted through the World Wide Web. In order to protect your privacy as well as the privacy of others, whenever you request information about yourself you will be asked to provide either a notarized statement or a statement signed under penalty of perjury stating that you are the person that you say you are. You may fulfill this requirement by: (1) completing and signing Form DOJ-361 (2) having your signature on your request letter witnessed by a notary, (3) including the following statement immediately above the signature on your request letter: "I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on [date]." If you request information about yourself and do not follow one of these procedures, your request cannot be processed. This requirement helps to ensure that private information about you will not be disclosed to anyone else. Likewise, files relating to another person regarding a matter the disclosure of which would invade that person's privacy ordinarily will not be disclosed. For example, if you seek information that would show that someone else (including even your spouse or another member of your immediate family) has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation -- or even was mentioned in a criminal file -- you will be requested to provide either: (1) a statement by that other person, authorizing the release of the information to you, that has been signed by that person and either was witnessed by a notary or includes a declaration made under penalty of perjury (using the language quoted in the preceding paragraph), (2) evidence that the subject of your request is deceased -- such as a death certificate, a newspaper obituary, or some comparable proof of death. Without the subject's consent or proof of death, in almost all cases the Justice Department will respond to a request made for information concerning another person's possible involvement in a law enforcement matter by stating that it will "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of responsive records. Such law enforcement information about a living person is released without that person's consent only when no personal privacy interest would be invaded by disclosing the information, such as when the information is already public or required to be made public, or when there is such a strong public interest in the disclosure that it overrides the individual's privacy interest. In making your request you should be as specific as possible with regard to names, titles, dates, places, events, subjects, recipients, the component(s) likely to maintain that record, etc. In addition, if you want records about a court case, you should provide the title of the case, the court in which the case was filed, and the nature of the case. If known, you should include any file designations or descriptions for the records that you want. You do not have to give a requested record's name or title, but the more specific you are about the records or types of records that you want, the more likely it will be that the Justice Department will be able to locate those records. For example, if you have been int
Are you fucking retarted or what?
One of the published documents in the index: Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence: http://www.nsa.gov/ufo/ufo00034.pdf Quoting from it: "And after we resolve our pressing scientific questions, it might be appropriate to make discreet inquiries as to how we could live in harmony and peace with our fellow man..." -- This made me LOL.
I and solved it for you Americans, so you don't need to ask any aliens for help on it. The answer is: Communication. Learn how to communicate better. You can't communicate with aliens if you don't have the simplest of understanding for your fellow man and species on this planet. Understanding and compassion of others is crucial. And by communication and compassion, I don't mean the George W(MD) Bush style diplomacy that consists entirely of sending battle fleets to bomb people and NOT TALKING to each other. If you want to avoid problems, you need to talk and solve the perceived injustices. Cosistent Paranoid delusions of WMD threats without any kind of proof is a sickness, and the current US government is very sick. There are no serious military threats to USA on this planet. Nobody benefits from attacking USA. The only motivation attackers have is REVENGE for what US military is doing abroad. Agressive and pre-emptive warfare is unnecessary, and resulting only in the creation of more terrorist threat to USA. Motivation for war of course lies in the US military corporations' self-interested profit seeking. This behaviour is sick and needs to stop.
To avoid species-wide catastrophies, it helps to look at bacteria on a dish. Some backteria poison each other. Some eat each other. But what forms a stable system that stays alive? Continuous self-mutilation of our planetary environment and species in pursuit of short term corporate profits is sick. Poisoning our environment, destroying our climate and driving nations to destructive, non-productive wars will not bring a higher civilization into existence. It will bring about our own destruction and decline. Humans on Earth are similar to the bacteria on the dish. We will drown in our own environmental destruction, waste and poisons unless we learn to cooperate globally. And to that end, USA needs to stop the short term corporate profit seeking through destructive wars. You have no enemies here but the ones you create yourselves through your deeds.
Browsing through the titles is really fascinating, because it gives you a bit of what the NSA was working on, or what that particular researcher was thinking about. It can even, depending on the title, give you a bit of a window into how that particular researcher thinks.
To someone who has a clue, this stuff must be a gold mine. Heck, I read the "adam and eve" article, and found out that the US was decrypting Enigma messages all the way back in 1943...and that's in the brochure section. Just looking at the prevalence of traffic analysis in the historical documents shows how message volume can be an event indicator.
What I haven't found yet is any indication that the NSA was using its decrypting information in a counter-decryption sort of way. I haven't found a title that says "thwarting traffic analysis with coherent noise," or "generating false positives can be more useful than generating false negatives."
Then again, there are titles like "Assignment of Storage Space in Rapid-Access Memory Systems, 1957." Whoa, that's a long time ago to be thinking about storage in RAM.
"Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages" (1969)
Mentioned in my blog that it is the same year as the quasar discovery that was mistaken as signals from Little Green Men (LGM). src.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.