Prologue 9/0 -- SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS
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Magic Circle:
Writing from his room in the Grand Hotel Principe in Limone Piemonte,
Jones thanked his old friend for the words of encouragement. The honor,
said Sir Eric, "has been won by a lot of hard work by very many people
within the circle and on the fringes of it, and it has also been partly
won by friendly cooperation from people."
Parker Paradox:
Representing GCHQ at NSA during the mid-1960s was Reginald H. Parker,
a dashing Englishman with an infectious sense of humor.
Early Members of the Circle of Eunuchs:
Official eavesdropping in Britain is steeped in tradition and shrouded
in secrecy. Even Shakespeare made note of the practice when he wrote in
Henry V, "The king hath note of all that they intend / By interception
which they dream not of."
Britain's Royal Mail Openers managed a charmed existence. Their single
public scandal occurred in 1844, when Joseph Mazzini charged Secretary
of State Sir James Graham with opening his letters and passing the
contents on to the Neapolitan government.
John Goldhammer of Commercial Cable Company and Clarence H. Mackay of
Commercial Cable Postal Telegraph Company. "In July, 1919," explained
Goldhammer, "when British censorship ceased, we were ordered by the
British Government to turn over to them all messages passing between
our own offices, 10 days after they were sent."
The original and primary source for information on ECHELON is an
article I wrote in New Statesman magazine ten years ago : NS, 12 August
1988 : "They've got it taped".
To forge this alliance, the NSA, soon after it was formed, established
the National Security Agency Scientific Advisory Board (NSASAB), a
ten-member panel of science wizards plucked from ivy-covered campuses,
corporate research labs, and sheepskin-lined think tanks.
Among the early members of the board was Stewart S. Cairns, who had
earned his doctorate at Harvard and was chairman of the mathematics
department at the University of Illinois at Urbana (the same school
where William Martin, not long before his defection, would be sent on
a two-year scholarship).
When Vice Admiral Laurence Frost arrived at the Puzzle Palace in the
fall of 1960, he found relations between the board and NSA strained and
bitter.
I LUV FUD! (The Medium is the Enemy):
In 1956 Dr. Howard T. Engstrom, a computer wizard and vice president of
Remington Rand, took over NSA's research and development organization.
The following year he was appointed deputy director of NSA and a year
later returned to Remington Rand.
Joseph H. Ream, executive vice president at CBS, was imported to
replace Engstrom as deputy director. He, too, left after a year; he
headed up CBS's Washington office and later CBS-TV's programming
department.
Ream's interlude at NSA is listed on his CBS biography simply as
"retirement."
Three months before Ream gave up codebreaking for "I Love Lucy," one of
the most important meetings in the history of the Agency took place in
a clapboard structure on Arlington Hall Station known as B Building. On
July 18, 1957, a handful of the nation's top scientists crowded
together in NSA's windowless Situation Room to present a blueprint for
the Agency's future technological survival.*
Nuclear PigLatin:
They...recommended the initiation of a Manhattan Project-like effort to
push the USA well ahead of the Soviet Union and all other nations in
the application of communications, computer science, mathematics, and
information theory to cryptology.
Rear Entry:
Now the decision had to be made about whether to continue funding, as
with Lightning, generalized, public research or to begin to direct
those funds toward secret, specialized, cryptologic research. It was a
choice between an open bridge or a hidden tunnel between the Agency and
the outside scientific community. Following the Baker report, the
decision was to use the tunnel.
Lost Alamo Chaos:
The CRD's statistics are, however, a bit misleading. Shortly after the
division's birth, several programs were launched to bring into the
secret fraternity several dozen of the nation's most outstanding
academic minds in mathematics and languages.
The Evil One Writes Black Operatives A Blank Check:
"NSA," the Agency declared with all due modesty, "certainly hastened
the start of the computer age." Among the early products of that age
was the use of computers in the banking industry for everything from
the massive transfers of money between banks and other financial
institutions, to the simple recording of a midnight transaction at a
remote automatic teller. But there was another product: computer crime.
With sufficient knowledge and the access to a terminal, one could trick
the computer into transferring funds into a dummy account or tickle a
cash-dispensing machine into disgorging its considerable holdings.
Caveat Emptor [WAS: Of course I luvs you...I fucks you, don't I?]:
IBM board chairman Thomas Watson, Jr., during the late 1960s set up a
cryptology research group at IBM's research laboratory in Yorktown
Heights, New York. Led by Horst Feistel, the research group concluded
its work in 1971 with the development of a cipher code-named Lucifer,
which it promptly sold to Lloyd's of London for use in a
cash-dispensing system that IBM had developed.
IBM developed Lucifer with a key 128 bits long. But before it submitted
the cipher to the NBS, it mysteriously broke off more than half the
key.
Government Encryption...There's A Method In Their Madness:
>From the very beginning, the NSA had taken an enormous interest in
Project Lucifer. It had even indirectly lent a hand in the development
of the S-box structures.
Debbie Does Ca$h:
The Agency, in turn, certified the algorithm as "free of any
statistical or mathematical weaknesses" and recommended it as the best
candidate for the nation's Data Encryption Standard (DES).
DC Does Chelsea:
The cozy relationship that the Agency had fostered with IBM would be
impossible with the free-wheeling academics. Nevertheless, virtually
all the researchers had an Achilles' heel: the National Science
Foundation.
D'Shauneaux Does DC:
Vice Admiral Bobby Inman moved into the Puzzle Palace, replacing newly
promoted General Lew Allen, Jr.
Fear:
Without any authorization, he wrote a threatening letter to the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the nation's
largest professional engineering society (of which he was a member),
warning that those planning to participate in an upcoming IEEE
symposium on cryptology might violate the law.
Uncertainty:
What Meyer emphasized was that ITAR covered the export not only of
actual hardware, but also of unclassified technical data associated
with the restricted equipment.
Disinformation:
He claimed that holding symposia and publishing papers on cryptology
were the same as exporting the information. Thus, he concluded, "unless
clearances or export licenses are obtained" on some of the lectures and
papers, "the IEEE could find itself in technical violation of the
ITAR."
"When time is of essence, he'll rise from the ash.":
Nicolai had suddenly been assaulted with one of the oldest weapons in
the nation's national security arsenal: the Invention Secrecy Act.
Passed in 1917 as a wartime measure to prevent the publication of
inventions that might "be detrimental to the public safety or defense
or might assist the enemy or endanger the successful prosecution
of the war," the measure ended with the conclusion of World War I. The
act was resurrected in 1940 and was later extended until the end of the
Second World War. Then, like the phoenix, it once again rose from the
ashes with the passage of the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, which
mandated that secrecy orders be kept for periods of no more than one
year unless renewed. There was a catch, however. The act also said that
a secrecy order "in effect, or issued, during a national emergency
declared by the President shall remain in effect for the duration of
the national emergency and six months thereafter." Because no one ever
bothered to declare an end to President Truman's 1951 emergency, the
emergency remained in effect until September 1978.
The Zimmermann Lineage:
To add insult to injury, Nicolai was planning to market his Phasorphone
at a price most buyers could easily afford, about $100, thus increasing
the interest in the technology.
Ted Turner Loves Lucy, Too:
The director's tactic was to launch a counterattack on two fronts--one
in the open and the other behind the scenes. On the open front, Inman
decided to convert to his own use what he believed was his opponent's
biggest weapon: the media.
Now he himself would begin manipulating the press for the Agency's
benefit.
Born Classified/Oppressed/Repressed/Depressed:
But Inman's most telling comment was his statement to Shapley that he
would like to see the NSA receive the same authority over cryptology
that the Department of Energy enjoys over research into atomic energy.
Such authority would grant to NSA absolute "born classified" control
over all research in any way related to cryptology.
PGP ProphetSized:
Warned Inman:
Application of the genius of the American scholarly community to
cryptographic and cryptanalytic problems, and widespread
dissemination of resulting discoveries, carry the clear risk that
some of NSA's cryptanalytic successes will be duplicated, with a
consequent improvement of cryptography by foreign targets. No less
significant is the risk that cryptographic principles embodied in
communications security devices developed by NSA will be rendered
ineffective by parallel nongovernmental cryptologic activity and
publication.
Voluntary 'Dog At Large'Fines:
Recognizing the constitutional questions involved in such drastic
actions, the study group decided on a middle ground: a system of
voluntary censorship.
Elvis Assassinated By The Men In Black:
Faurer, addressing a meeting of the IEEE, left little doubt that to
ignore the Center would be to risk saying good-by to lucrative
government contracts. "Frankly," the NSA chief warned, "our intention
is to significantly reward those DOD suppliers who produce the computer
security products that we need."
Monkeywrenching Dave Null:
Lack of such cooperation, CIA Deputy Director Inman said at the
Center's opening, "might lead to a highly undesirable situation where
private-sector users (e.g., banks, insurance companies) have higher
integrity systems than the government."
Voluntary/Mandatory:
As a result of what he called the "hemorrhaging of the country's
technology," Inman warned a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science that "the tides are moving, and moving fast,
toward legislated solutions that in fact are likely to be much more
restrictive, not less restrictive, than the "voluntary" censorship
system of the Study Group.
[ADVERTISEMENT] Nuclear Hoover Vacume Gets ALL The Dirt:
On the other hand, drug dealers were not the only ones who unwittingly
found their way into NSA's magnetic-tape library. Also captured were
the hungry demands of wayward congressmen insisting on bribes from
foreign governments.
You Have A Right To Be Monitored:
You Have A Right To Be Kept In The Dark:
You Have A Right To No Counsel:
The key to the legislation could have been dreamed up by Franz Kafka:
the establishment of a supersecret federal court. Sealed away behind a
cipher-locked door in a windowless room on the top floor of the Justice
Department building, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is
most certainly the strangest creation in the history of the federal
Judiciary.
Almost unheard of outside the inner sanctum of the intelligence
establishment, the court is like no other. It sits in secret session,
holds no adversary hearings, and issues almost no public opinions or
reports. It is listed in neither the Government Organizational Manual
nor the United States Court Directory and has even tried to keep
its precise location a secret. "On its face," said one legal authority
familiar with the court, "it is an affront to the traditional American
concept of justice."
You Have A Right To Bend Over:
Under such circumstances, it is little wonder that the federal
government has never lost a case before the court.
Legalizing WaterGate:
When the Reagan administration came into office, however, the Justice
Department argued that the power for foreign intelligence black-bag
jobs was vested not in the court, but in the inherent authority of the
President. Presiding Judge Hart, in the court's only published opinion,
agreed. Thus, in rejecting the administration's application for a new
surreptitious entry, he was in fact going along with the argument of
the Justice Department. As a result the rejected break-in and all
subsequent surreptitious entries need no court authorization, only
presidential approval.
Rule of Obscurity [WAS: Rule of Law]:
Even more disturbing than the apparent evolution of the surveillance
court into an Executive Branch rubber stamp are the gaping holes and
clever wording of the FISA statute, which nearly void it of usefulness.
Such language, intentional as well as unintentional, permits the NSA to
rummage at will through the nation's international telecommunications
network and to target or watch-list any American who happens to step
foot out of the country.
The Information Surveillance Highway:
"Electronic surveillance," the statute reads, means "the acquisition by
an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device" of the
approved targets. But nowhere does the statute define the meaning of
the key word acquisition. Rather, it is left to NSA to define.
The Inlsaw/Indio Reservation Gambling Gambit:
Thus it is possible for GCHQ to monitor the necessary domestic or
foreign circuits of interest and pass them on to NSA through the UKUSA
Agreement. Once they were received, NSA could process the
communications through its own computers and analysts, targeting and
watch-listing Americans with impunity, since the action would not be
covered under the FISA statute or any other law.
Debbie Does Deputy Dog:
No such exclusion, however, was ever included in the final FISA
statute. Instead, the statute now calls for what one constitutional law
expert has termed "compulsory spy service," requiring "communications
common carriers, their officers, employees, and agents . . . to provide
information, facilities, or technical assistance to persons
authorized by law to intercept wire or oral communications or to
conduct electronic surveillance" and also ordering them to protect the
secrecy of the operations.
CAMP Revisited / Crypto Uzis for Deputy Dog:
Under the Reagan executive order, the NSA can now, apparently, be
authorized to lend its full cryptanalytic support--analysts as well as
computers--to "any department or agency" in the federal government and,
"when lives are endangered," even to local police departments.
David Waters Predicts SmartSSNCards:
Tons of electronic surveillance equipment at this moment are
interconnected within our domestic and international common
carrier telecommunications systems. Much more is under contract
for installation. Perhaps this equipment is humming away in a
semi-quiescent state wherein at present "no citizen is targeted";
simply scanned. . . How soon will it be, however, before a punched
card will quietly be dropped into the machine, a card having your
telephone number, my telephone number, or the number of one of our
friends to whom we will be speaking?
And once we've rid ourselves of those pesky humans...:
"HUMINT [Human Intelligence] is subject to all of the mental
aberrations of the source as well as the interpreter of the source,"
Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter once explained. "SIGINT isn't.
SIGINT has technical aberrations which give it away almost immediately
if it does not have bona fides, if it is not legitimate. A good
analyst can tell very, very quickly whether this is an attempt at
disinformation, at confusion, from SIGINT. You can't do that from
HUMINT; you don't have the bona fides--what are his sources? He may be
the source, but what are his sources?"
Chuck Conners Appointed To Supreme Court--Cows Nervous:
Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such
invasions of individual security? *
* Justice Brandeis answered his own question when he quoted from
Boyd v. United States (116 u.s. 616): "It is not the breaking of
his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers that constitutes the
essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefensible
right of personal security, personal liberty, and private
property. (277 U.S.438, at pages 474-475.)
Army of (Black) Dog / Take A Bite Out Of Technotyranny:
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the
capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must
see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this
technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that
we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there no
return.
