public privacy, NSA resources

[Pat Farrell]

A fellow cypherpunk lister says about the number of employees
at NSA:
>40,000?  Is this for real? Does anyone know how this would compare to
>FBI or CIA?  Also, does anyone have a clue on the black budget?  The
>author seems to hint here that while it is not "readily discernible" it
>might be inferrable.
>
The number of employees at the FBI is public info. I don't
have it at hand. CIA employment used to be secret, and may
still be. Of course you can buy a picture from SPOT and count
the cars for an estimate. At both agencies, there are a
significant number of contract employees, who are not on the
employment rolls, but are efectively the same as government
employees. They aren't counted in public info.

I can't guess at the number of NSA folks. But I can relate an
story....

I gave a paper at this year's National Computer Security
Conference, in Baltimore. Like all conferences, it had a
registration area, vendor's booths, etc. 

Following form, it had nice folks behind counters with signs
over the top, with the usual:
	Prepaid A-F | Prepaid G-M | .... | Walkup | Press | ...

sections. What surprized me was the row of counters labeled:
NSA A-E | NSA F-H | ..... NSA W-Z

There were as many NSA booths as all the rest combined. (ok,
+- 10%) 

Another aside. The NCSC is essentially a front for the NSA.
NCSC exists but has no more than two employees, one is the
secretary to an NSA official.

Pat


Pat Farrell,      Grad Student                       pfarrell at cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
PGP key available via finger or request           #include standard.disclaimer