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Ask Slashdot: What's the Real NSA Like?
"The National Security Agency, is actually an organization of geeks and nerds parallel to the role of Q in James Bond. They arm the government (CIA, the spy agency; FBI the government police, and the military) with cryptographic systems to protect the missions of those other organizations, and they also have the job of trying to break the cryptographic systems that might be in place to prevent the completion of those missions. You can see this evidenced in their behavior of attempting to block the export of "strong cryptosystems", because that merely makes their job harder.
In all honesty, you will find that the charter for the NSA has a Top Secret clearance level, so we may not actually know the true ajenda of the group, but since they are solely populated by scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, the stories of their involvement in Danger and Daring Do are greatly exaggerated. I would doubt that many of them have ever held a gun before.
So in my not so humble, but somewhat educated, opinion, the popular view of the NSA is fairly inaccurate, and confusingly to me, they seem uninterested in correcting that view.
Comments welcome. But keep in mind that these are the opinions of one person based on contact through job fairs, interviews, and cryptographic history articles. "
So what image do you think represents the real NSA? Are they closer to the Spooks from Hollywood, or are they just normal people like you and me?
Are the ones we catch. The ones who get nominated for Darwin awards. The ones who fail.
You will never see a smart criminal because they don't get caught. They get elected for office, own corporations, control institutions, etc. They figure out how to use the system to their advantage.
They probably aren't that different than successful businessmen, excepting that successful businessmen also, as a side effect, benefit the country, the people, or the economy.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The NSA may just be a bunch of geeks, but the power of geekhood may be used for good or for evil. Don't forget that Hitler had a huge crypto department, too, with Enigma and all. Just because an organization employs geeks doesn't mean that they're doing things true geeks/hackers would approve of. It just means they require skills that only geeks have (math & coding primarily) and are willing to pay for those skills.
Crypto in the hands of the mafia, or kiddie porn peddlers, does society no good. Crypto in the hands of honest citizens who value their privacy does society no harm. It's a shame that the NSA, the treasury department, and our government have taken the first as a reason to hinder the second.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
In fact.. based on this model of what the NSA is and isn't... many of the people reading this are members of the NSA... /. is afterall 'News for Nerds'.
NSA MONDAY MORNING {at the coffee machine):
NSA AGENT 1: Hey guys, did you check out slashdot over the weekend?
AGENT 2: No, I was installing Mandrake 6.1 and I coulnd't get the darn ppp connection up..
AGENT 1: Well check it out... they're on to us.
/* CDM */
hi, i'm neko, and i work for the nsa. (crowd replies "hi, neko")
:) ). we aren't freaks, and i can attest that we're not all brainiacs (don't make me recall some bad examples *shiver*)
seriously, i'm a korean linguist, and while i put on an air force uniform to go to work, it's the nsa which really calls the shots. although i've not worked in the nsa headquarters in maryland (i don't plan on it either, since it just means getting bounced back here to korea every other year, and korea's not bad anyway), i can tell you what i know from my perspective (well, not all of it, of course).
to be honest, what we do we regard as Just a Job. granted, a deadly serious job, but that's as maybe, it's still a job. we don't go around talking spy talk or codewords, i've never met agent 99, we don't hack into you computer at night, and we spend more time than any of us will admit irritating each other with stupid practical jokes just like everyone else (we locked our flight commander in a phone booth the other night, that was a sight
as for specifically what we do, i of course can't say much about it, but suffice to say that no, we don't spend our time spying on americans, or south koreans for that matter. in fact, there are quite explicit guidelines about making damn sure that we don't. as for the 'black helicopter' conspiracy perception of the lot of us, i have to say it's pretty much bogus from what i've seen. personally i thought the earlier story regarding bar codes with social security number being placed on high school students to be far more disturbing than anything i've seen here. we sure the hell don't do anything like that.
in short, if you don't believe anything i've said here, and hate us because of some book you read or something on dateline, then fine, that's not our job. just remember that our job is to help prevent wars, and help minimalize the loss of american lives in case one breaks out, and i think we do a damned good job of it. i know south korea is happy to have us here (and they do know exactly what we do, sicne we work with korean soldiers side by side), even if you're not.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
NSA job requirements:
- Degree in computer science/engineering, electrical engineering, math, or whatever language the enemy is speaking today (Arabic languages)
- U.S. citizenship of you and your immediate family (though I hear this is sometimes waived)
- Ability to pass a detailed background check for security clearance
That's about it. The NSA has all sorts of educational programs, such as one I am applying for where they will pay for your college education if you go to work for them afterwards. Free college, guaranteed employment, and if you're really good private enterprise will pay 'em off and you go work for someone else.
From what I know (based on a Discovery Channel program) they have their own chip manufacturers in their main headquarters making processors for a warehouse-sized supercomputer submersed in a non-conductive coolant (which is located in the basement). They also said that it was able to brute force a regular unix password in less than a second! Thats 30 Years of computing time for those of us with a pentium.
A woman from the NSA recently came to give a colloqium for the math dept at my school. One of the things she talked about was cryptography and why the NSA doesn't like us having large keys. One of my questions was why the NSA has never (as far as I know) attacked PGP. I figured if she would answer my question that it'd be that they attack the seperate components of PGP, but since she _didn't_ answer it, I assumed that they know of a weakness in it (maybe some type of multiplication by a number). I've been speculating ever since.
I used to work for a USAF contractor developing COMSEC (communications security) accounting software. I can tell you that that primary role of the NSA is making and breaking cryptography. (If you want to speculate wildly on secondary roles, be my guest.)
Ironically, the two parts of their major role are polar opposites. On one hand, the NSA researches new crypto systems, evaluates and approves third-party (i.e., commercial) crypto systems, generates and distributes key, and provides infrastructure to keep all that running.
On the other hand, they are constantly involved in trying to break enemy crypto systems -- providing COMINT (communications intelligence) and SIGINT (signal intelligence) to the rest of the government. They're generally not involved in classic Hollywood "spy stuff". They don't have agents (ala James Bond), domestically or abroad. That's the domain of the CIA.
To the people in the field, the NSA was a source of bureaucracy and paperwork, but did not inspire much fear. The expansion "National Stupidity Agency" was far more common then "No Such Agency".
Which is not to say the NSA is not extremely paranoid. It is. The rules for EMSEC, COMPUSEC, and the like are a royal pain in the you-know-what. The NSA invented them all. But there is nothing "secret" about those rules.
Incidentally, the NSA is trying to get out of the business of generating and distributing crypto key, because it is damn expensive and rather impractical. They distribute over something like 200 tons of crypto key annually. At the same time, however, they want to maintain full, draconian control over everything. The resulting conflicting efforts would be amusing if my tax dollars weren't paying for it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
For example, Ronald Reagon in the early 1980's purposefully caused the recession at that time. Inflation was at 14% and getting worse. According to economic theory, you should be able jack up interest rates, throw millions of people out of work, and within a year the economy will recover, but resume at a much lower inflation rate.
As it turns out, Ronnie was right. But try explaining that to the people at the beginning of the recession who lost their jobs. I'm sure if they really understood how much control the government has over whether or not to force the country into a recession, they would be majorly pissed off.
Likewise, consider US cryptographic export restrictions. While its theoretical purpose is to make it easier for the NSA to spy on foreigners, it has the weird effect of reducing encryption within the United States. The average person in the US uses 40-bit encryption. Lots of products (such as the new AirPort wireless LAN) use 40-bit encryption because of this, even within the US. I think the government really does understand that export restrictions really have an effect on the encryption used by their own population.
On the other hand, I like low-inflation, and I also like the fact that I personally have easy access to 128-bit encryption but that the average stupid criminal doesn't. In other words, I think I like conspiracies. :)
My grandfather was an agent of the NSA, and so I know a little bit about it, but most of my knowledge comes from everyone but him. He never really talks about it, but I have to wonder what a WWII vet and a NSA employee would think of Cryptonomicon. I know for a fact that he's good with simple cryptosystems, even though we have no knowledge of him ever working in that field. We (family members) believe that at later stages, he was mostly administrative, working on intercepting transmissions.
:)
The NSA is really an outgrowth of what was known as the Army Security Agency, in which he spent a lot of time doing something involving lots of radios and the Philippines [intercepting foreign communications]. The NSA and ASA both exist now, but apparently the NSA is essentially a workhorse agency, taking orders [more like kind requests] from the other cloak-and-dagger types. They have two basic functions, those being to monitor the world's radio traffic [if one visits Fort Meade, Maryland, they will note the large geodesic bubbles on the tops of buildings; apparently the purpose is to obscure the directions their satellite dishes point, for obvious reasons], and the other being to decrypt everything in sight. At the same time, they do advise the rest of the Executive Branch on matters of systems security and in the past, have worked on developing secure cryptosystems ["in the past" because one has to wonder whether the private sector is outpacing them in that respect and rendering those efforts outdated] and implementing them.
As far as what the "real" NSA is like, I suppose it's always been a very real phenomenon for me, and I have never really had any illusions about what they do... it appears to all simple inspections that what they do is exactly what they claim to do, except that now, they have been forced to react to the internet, and have thus extended their resources in that direction. However, at least as far as bursting in anywhere, guns blazing, I think that's most likely the last thing they've ever been involved in. The most clandestine thing I can see the NSA doing is setting up big radio antennae inside sketchy little huts in the jungle. Fun
This thread seems to say "the NSA are technocrats".
Our tax dollars hire them to spy on everyone outside the united states and find the connections between all sorts of people, their bank accounts, their friends, political and commercial organizations. They may or may not be spying on Americans as well--they have stone-walled the U.S. Senate on the issue of Echelon.
> I've heard some say they are the biggest
> collection of brains in the US. I think that's
> probably true, except for maybe RAND.
The RAND Corporation's Netwar report, prepared for the U.S.
government, recommends that the govt assists repressive governments in
defending themselves in struggles over their reputations, and that
repressive governments can do this with a variety of dirty tricks and
covert operations.
If these recommendations are being carried out, and I have seen some
evidence to suggest that they are, I suspect information from Echelon is
being used to destroy human-rights networks.
I personally believe NSA intelligence filters from
the NSA => the U.S. Army =>
to the Columbian army => rightwing paramilitary
If the NSA's powerful data collection capabilities have been used in this pursuit, American money is [indirectly] responsible for the the blood of, for example, Columbian and Mexican peasants killed by pro-military paramilitaries.
Merlin
Gary, care to expand on your visit to the NSA? Here's my story:
In '95, I visited the NSA and the National Cryptographic Museum (adjacent to the NSA headquarters). I didn't make it past the barb-wire fence at the NSA, but I did encounter a few spooks.
The front gate was unattended, so I drove right in and parked as close to the big black monolith of a building as I could. My friend and I began to make silly poses and take lots of pictures, joking that we probably weren't the only ones taking photos of us. A man in a white shirt and black tie (think Michael Douglas in Falling Down) approaches us: "Are you lost?" Without waiting for an answer, he briskly walks away. We jump in the car and head to the museum.
A group of Marines were on some sort of field trip to the museum. As they exited, an officer was giving them coffee cups with the NSA seal on them. Wearing my "Clipper Chip Inside" t-shirt, I approached him and asked how I might get one. After a few minutes of "you punks don't know the reasons the world needs the Clipper Chip...to tell you would be a breach of national security," he agreed to sell me one for $8 cash.
So, no real MIB-types. But there's certainly a spook mentality around that place.