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New Report On NSA Released Today
daveschroeder writes "George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, at an intelligence conference. Two years later, an abstract and the three current volumes of the report are now available (PDF) from GWU and the National Security Archive. Aid, author of the forthcoming history 'The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency,' says Johnson's study shows 'refreshing openness and honesty, acknowledging both the NSA's impressive successes and abject failures during the Cold War.' A fourth volume remains classified. Johnson says in an audio interview: 'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'" And reader sampas zooms in on a section in Document 6 about the growth of NSA's IT: their first Cray purchase in 1976, the growth of circuits between facilities, and internal feuds over centralized IT development vs. programmers-in-departments. "A young systems engineer named [redacted] was urging NSA to look at some technology that had been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1969 DARPA had developed a computer internetting system called ARPANET... NSA quickly adopted the DARPA solution. The project was called platform."
...are in another Wall Street Journal article. On Vietnam:
Another area of interest is the legal issues with which the NSA has always grappled:
everyone who clicks the links will become a person of interest to the NSA.
As a typical /.er, I might just RTFA, rather than the summary!
Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
[Redacted]
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
A young systems engineer named [redacted]
Was urging the NSA to look at some [redacted]
He [redacted] the [redacted],
so they [redacted] in [redacted],
and [redacted] the [redacted] in [CLASSIFIED DUE TO MATTERS OF NATIONAL SECURITY].
The National Cryptologic Museum, I found it very interesting. If you are in the area you might give it an hour or two.
http://www.nsa.gov/MUSEUM/museu00009.cfm
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If the declassification folks took the time to blot out some of the finer details that probably do need the use of some classified network to read, you would think they'd remove the particular classification compartments on the actual pages. Now everyone on the intarwebs can see it. Oh noes!
I forgot, this is apparently good enough for government work. Awesome.
a 3 volume history of NSA activities 2000-2008? Those would have to be much larger volumes I'm guessing.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
I visited the NSA many times from 1986 to 1990 - I found their computer systems to be abysmal. After several tours, and it was obvious that the whole place had a 1960's mindset towards computing. Namely, get the biggest, fastest, and most expensive computers, then build your own software around them.
Yes, they had the very first Cray and CDC supercomputers - each had a homebrew operating system, written in house, and practically undocumented. Horribly expensive to maintain your own custom operating system, and lots of downtime.
Lots and lots of antique 9-track (and 7 track!) vacuum-column tapedrives, even into the 1990's. Several management types proudly said, "we have acres of computers". Literally, a dinosaur zoo.
They seemed allergic to microcomputers - the IBM PC had been out for several years and I didn't see one there until 1988.
I lectured about Unix (with several hundred people in the audience). From the questions, it was obvious that practically nobody knew anything about it. No knowledge about TCP/IP or BIND. Several people expressed surprise and interest in the (then obvious) idea of salting a password file.
I came away with the sense that NSA was 5 to 10 years behind the times. It was quite disillusioning to realize that they spent money prodigiously, yet all the cool stuff was at the universities.
Maybe things have changed - a river of money has flowed into Ft. Meade over the past 10 years. But I've become quite skeptical of the wonderful claims made about NSA, especially by those who work there.
...and even then, only did so as a guest/contractor, then you have no idea about what is going on at NSA currently.
Computing under DOD has always been an exercise in maintaining extreme reliability, sometimes at the cost of (perceived) modernization. Many enterprise organizations still use several-year-old, proven systems because that's what's reliable and that's what works. And what ignorant managers proudly attest to in any organization is usually separated by a gulf from reality.
But you're right: things have changed. There's a lot of old technology all over the military and the IC, but there is also a lot of conventional modern -- and even "bleeding edge" -- gear. The mindset has drastically changed from "must be built here" to the extensive use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. And that was already happening in the mid- to late-1990s.
Funny you should mention universities -- academia is simultaneously a fantastic dinosaur zoo of its own, and simultaneously a breeding ground for some of the most exciting and groundbreaking work. NSA has long had this same duality. If you saw the NSA of the last 10-15 years, you'd be surprised at the technology in play -- warts and all.
'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'
So what? Nobody is going to jail over it. Political coups facilitated by such activities are not reversed. Prosecutions stemming from them are not overturned. Ill-gotten gains from such information illegally used for profit are not confiscated.
So 50 years later documents are declassified and people are identified who broke the law back then. They're all dead by now.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out," he says in an interview. "It always comes out.
Mr. Johnson went on to explain that there were no operations that violate a statute like FISA that have not been revealed. It's futile to look for operations that violate a statute like FISA, as all of them have been revealed. No unrevealed operations violating a statue like FISA remain. All unrevealed operations comply with all statutes like FISA.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
In the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, NSA and military spies missed the Soviets transferring a battery of offensive missiles to Cuba. That "marked the most significant failure" by government eavesdroppers to warn national leaders since World War II, Mr. Johnson wrote.
I guess 9/11 won't be included until Volumn 4 due out in 2058.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Most significant events, they had no clue.
Come on google!
Sounds like any other company to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The total lack of security with keying material until this guy was caught.
http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/InmateFinderServlet?Transaction=IDSearch&needingMoreList=false&IDType=IRN&IDNumber=22449-037&x=0&y=0
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/heath.pdf
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
like the software hasn't already tagged all of us, for reading this thread... it's got enough of the key words.
besides... it's not that big of a deal...
I was under direct surveillance back in the 90's [member of the "A" list, one of us hacked the NSA inter-office mail system, during the unabomber incident...], and I'm still free[ish]. I recently visited ORNL and didn't have any problems, even though I was within walking distance of Y-12 [just in case there weren't enough key words... this aught to do it.], and the security was easier to handle there than at the friggin airport [e.g. they didn't make a fuss about the size of my tooth-paste tube, &c.].
Get over it. You're under surveillance whether you like it, or not. Freedom is an illusion that we cherish... as long as we are allowed to.
I mean come on, be original for once.