From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> To: cypherpunks@toad.com
That museum sounds fascinating. I got to visit the NSA's so-called "Friendship Annex" once on business. This is not at Fort Meade itself, but a few miles away, to keep the impure and unclean away from the holy temple itself.
It's named after Friendship Airport which is not called Baltimore-Washington Interntional Airport which these buildings are very close to.
Whoever named this place had quite a sense of irony; the surveillance cameras, briefcase searches, constant escorts, and armed guards did not project a particularly "friendly" image. I was hoping to pick up some souvenirs, but when I asked about an employee gift shop they looked at me like I was crazy. One thing that really caught my eye was a poster which was displayed widely, apparently a security-reminder-of-the-month thing. This was the holiday season, and the poster showed Santa stopped at the gate submitting his bag to be searched. I'm surprised they didn't have the old boy being strip-searched. Anyway, I begged and begged but nobody would let me have one.
I believe you can get on a mailing list for these posters free. Try calling NSA and asking for M56 or "Security Awareness".
I really think the government is missing an opportunity by not selling NSA sweatshirts and such. Recently the Los Angeles coroner's office started selling souvenirs and they were overwhelmed by the popular demand. Especially as cryptography becomes more popular, the NSA's sinister-but- glamorous image could be a marketer's dream.
The bureaucracy in the Federal Government makes this sort of thing very messy.
Hal
Donald