Prologue 9/0 -- SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS ------------------------------------------ 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.