This does not sound nearly as much like a "computer upgrade" as a "security downgrade". When you make top-secret files easier to move around the network, you make them easier to steal. No matter what the precautions are, wider access to people within the organization means more access for people who want to supplement their civil-servant incomes by selling secrets. Even if the technology is perfect, the people are a weak link and the more of them you put on a list the likelier it is that there's a broken link. On the other hand, we could see some interesting things if the technological solutions to this set of secure communications problems is ever made public. It amuses me to think they may wind up using off-the-shelf solutions like kerberos and PGP. Bear On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:

NSA COMPUTER UPGRADE - [The Wall Street Journal, B1.] What does it take to send an e-mail to all 38,000 employees at the government's premier computing center, the supersecret National Security Agency? "An act of God," says the agency's director since 1999, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden. The NSA, he discovered to his chagrin last year, has 68 e-mail systems. He has three computers on his desk - none of which can communicate with the others. To deal with those frustrations, Hayden is now plunging into one of the U.S. government's biggest information-technology outsourcing deals ever.

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It is likely that a principal reason for the new NSA system is to be able to more efficiently spy on its users, as with intelink, siprnet and niprnet -- and our own beloved Internet whose users and hackers know not what is being logged. Counterintelligence has become a more important function of the intel agencies than intelligence, as with corporations, educational institutions and families who face internal attacks. Exposing threats to kids, church and nation is a hot market. Counterintelligence in all its forms is riding high as a savior of the commonweal. Still there are dark sides to knowing the truth. The reports of DNA evidence showing that up to 28% of fathers are not the biological fathers of children for whom they are legal parents is a reminder that revisionist intelligence is not limited to the spooks as data mining becomes more widely available. And what will come of government as it becomes more subject to internal attacks due to greater access to snooping technology and counter-snooping attempts to hold onto the privilege of knowing what underlings do not? Deutch thought he knew why it was wise to work at home, to avoid the counter-snoops watching him, but the counter-snoops knew what he did not -- they work for themselves not the bosses. Sys admins may well become the power mongerers of the future, or is that already the case. Hayden is dreaming if he thinks he will be able to watch his troops without their knowing and counteracting it. What is worrisome is the prospect of a coup by the info hi-technoids, most of who work for the military or have contracts with them -- out contracts. SAIC, BBN, Mitre, RAND, the telecomms, the satcomms, operators of the thick connections worldwide, coupled with the wizards at the NSA, NRO, USAF, DIA, and so, could put on a formidable putsch, while the oversight committees remain, as ever, three monkied.