I didn't comment before on Michael Wilson's revelations about the Maryland Procurement Office (and how it revealed NSA purchases). But I will now. He writes:
Michael Wilson Managing Director, The Nemesis Group
[I hope that the record of purchases made through the Maryland Procurement group are making their way from systems such as Mead Data and into private systems for analysis; warning, access of such data is expensive.]
Actually, there are much cheaper way to get even more accurate data. Gunter Ahrendt has been the compiler of a list of supercomputer sites, a list which he publishes weekly in comp.sys.super. (I haven't seen it recently, so it may be dormant for the summer.) Here's an excerpt for the NSA and CSS: 2) 83.73 - (02-JUN-1993) [NSA] National Security Agency,California,US 1) 3 * Cray C916-512 83.73 3) 69.79 - (22-JUL-1993) [CSS] National Computing Security Center,Central Security Service,National Security Agency Headquarters,Fort George G Meade,Maryland,US, postmaster@ftmeade-eas.army.mil 1) TMC CM-5/512 ~35.04 {linearly scaled from a 64CPU unit} 2) 5 * Cray Y-MP/8-256 34.75 etc. I don't discount the possibility that NSA, CSS, NRO, etc. try to hide some of their purchases--certainly in budgets, if not physically. But in general they have little to gain by hiding the fact that they have, for example, 8 Connection Machines. After all, Thinking Machines knows (purchase, service), and word gets out. Ahrendt has had good accuracy. In any case, the number of supercomputers the NSA and its related affiliate agencies have is not too worrisome to me. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."