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NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum
Schneier writes "Most people might not be aware of it, but there's a National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, at NSA Headquarters. It's hard to know its exact relationship with the NSA. Is it part of the NSA, or is it a separate organization? Can the NSA reclassify things in its archives?" There's some interesting stuff in the comments about the building's reason for existence (window views a nearby NSA building?) and some stuff they have (an Enigma machine!).
Very cool museum, I think I even saw Brian Kernighan there talking to what looked like young VC types.. Here's some pics I snapped..
http://www.thoughtcrime.com/NSA%20Museum/Site/NSA%20Museum%20visit.html
We had a Storagetek silo like the one on display at my current corp, but spec'd out with LTO3 or LTO4.. I'm thinking NSA had one just like it but 10+ years earlier (and with older tape tech of course)..
You know you are in the right place when the receptionist informs you that you can use the Enigma machine while you wait for the next tour group to start. Dig around in their library and look for books printed on line paper, that's the stuff you won't find anywhere else. Oh yea, the tour guides are also recruiters if you think you got what it takes.
Also interesting and relevant is that a Navajo to Japanese dictionary wouldn't help. The Code Talkers used a code within a code, with their language being only the first layer. They also used a combination of standard military/intelligence community "talking code" (basically obscuring the meaning of phrases by referring to code words instead of places, people, or operations), and the simple fact that they had to reinterpret the language to include all the modern warfare technology and techniques they were imparting, to make most of the Code Talk incomprehensible to even native Navajo speakers. While not Code Talkers were ever captured alive, a number of regular Navajo troops were, and none could ever decode the signals Japanese intelligence forced them to listen to.
The Navajo that originally developed the Code Talk were clever on a number of levels. It really was a nearly perfect code. The only way to decode it would be to find a fluent speaker of the language (rare as Hell outside the tribe) who also happened to be an expert on codes and decoding messages (practically unheard of outside of the Code Talkers themselves).
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The absolute best job I ever had was a codebreaker at NSA in the mid 70's when I was with the Army Security Agency. Critical mission, challenging brain-straining job, and the most advanced computers on the planet to play with. Have never been to the museum but imagine it would bring back some memories. Most people immediately think "Oh boy, Enigma!", but that is only the most public of the items, and not necessarily the most interesting. My proudest possession is the Dundee Orange Marmalade jar that I still keep on my desk. You either know what that means, or you don't.
The banking system used enigma until the 1950's even though the UK could decrypt messages effectively a decade before. (do you believe that collossus was really shut down?)
Collossus wasn't used to crack Enigma - it was used to crack messages from Lorenz machines, which were more complicated than Enigma. The amazing thing is that the cryptologists at Bletchley were able to figure out the way the machine worked having never seen one (indeed, they didn't see one for over 2 years after cracking it) due to an error by a machine operator. But yes, I do believe it was really shut down and evidence destroyed - that's why it took so many years of painstaking reconstruction from photographs and human memory to rebuild one of the things...
The dials on an Engima rotate btw rather than parts inside of them. Each rotation of the wheels causes different pathways through the rotors to be used, thus changing the output - IIRC you can see the wiring inside some of the rotors at both the NSA museum, and the equally amazing Bletchley Park Museum in the UK (http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/)