History Channel television show on NSA (fwd)

[Phillip Zakas]

I also watched the program.  Not very exciting.  The Puzzle Palace by James
Bamford, though dated, is probably the best insight I've read.

I've had a few direct experiences with the NSA over the past years because
of my crypto/tech background.  Strangest experiences: getting yelled at by
an NSA mathematician during several odd negotiations at Ft. Meade in '98; as
chief technologist for a large US online company's endeavors to export a
128-bit browser to its intl. users in '98 (worked with both FBI and NSA on
this -- came close to getting the license too); met with former heads of two
nsa groups who hinted interesting observations on Skipjack, intl crypto
products and relative strength of 128 bit crypto; finally, I was actually
trained in NSA's infosec methodology in 2000 (I even have a certificate from
them for passing the classes...the legal disclaimers on the thing are
priceless -- you can check out some of their classes at www.nsa.gov if you
want details).  ...blah blah some other stuff too which is not nearly as
interesting.  No, though I've been to ft. meade several times i've never
seen the "11 acres of super computers" and i've never seen operations rooms,
etc.  though i have seen some pretty boring cinderblocked conf. rooms in the
middle of upper floors where computers aren't networked at all, the doors
are made of steel and the walls emit a strange low hum; one door had a label
which said: "not much of anything, really".  there's lots of humer like that
all around the place...probably to help break the tension of not being able
to talk about what you do all day every day i imagine.

IMHO the NSA staff are overworked and still in search of a clear, cool and
patriotic uber-mission.  fighting drugs and hackers just isn't as sexy as
manipulating russian satellite image transmissions. Plus funding cuts means
they've scaled back on activities which have normally been the role of the
nsa...must be weird to work there where for years you had all the funding
you needed, and now you're losing funding and staff. Recently, for example,
they stopped performing infosec assessments for large US companies (like
Disney in 1997, clearly because mickey mouse is a national critical icon)
because they don't have enough people to perform the work and while NIST is
now responsible for such things, only the NSA has staff trained to do these
assessments (which is one reason I was trained, and no, i don't work for
nist). Now NSA only performs infosec assessments for US critical
infrastructure (mostly military and r&d sites). In fact the whole PDD-63/us
critical infrastructure thing is very big and right now no one other than
NIST/NSA is assumed to have the knowledge to carry out that mission.  Yet
there are seriously something like only 13 NSA staffers performing the
duties/leading red teams, etc.

I got the strong feeling that Red Team and IW efforts are hot topics of
interest at the NSA (and Army, Navy and AF too).  Thanks in part to
successes in manipulating Milosevic-and-friends banking records during the
Yugoslavia conflict, these areas are receiving a lot of attention.  Watch
for huge growth in activities here (in fact you can see some congressional
funding justifications for IW program using China's, Israel's and Russia's
own official IW ops activities).

BTW, has anyone heard of recent moves to push SS7 phone messaging traffic
over the internet in a bid to boost scalability and LNP resolution speeds?
Three effects: it'll work better than the current SS7 network alone;
improved eavesdropping on conversations which touch land lines (fyi only
phone-to-phone cell phone comms like nextel's two-way-radio feature don't
use land lines I believe); decreased need to try to decipher the message
while it's in the air (it's harder to intercept over the air transmissions).

sorry for the long posting, but thought i could share my small glimpse of
their vast activities.

phillip





-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM
[mailto:owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 10:57 PM
To: Jim Choate
Cc: cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com; The Club Inferno;
austin-cpunks at einstein.ssz.com; sci-tech at einstein.ssz.com
Subject: Re: History Channel television show on NSA (fwd)



Watched it, ET giving me a 3 hr advantage over you golden staters. A
definite passover except for last 10 minutes, Echelon-dodging making
the spooks limber enough to Macarena with Clipper Chip-endorsing Al
with dispatch. "Trust us," DIRNSA proudly proclaims, with Church bells
ringing in the near distance. Of note is latest permutation of
horsemen riding in on backs of Defcon-going hackers as justification
for existence of The Agency That Shall Not Be Named.

-Declan, channeling JYA



On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 05:18:24PM -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:38:19 -0500 (EST)
> From: "P.J. Ponder" <ponder at freenet.tlh.fl.us>
> To: cryptography at c2.net
> Subject: History Channel television show on NSA
>
> The 'History Channel' cable TV network will air a show about the NSA
> tomorrow night January 8, at 8 pm Eastern.  Their website says this about
> it:
>
> America's Most Secret Agency
>
> The National Security Agency, America's most secret and controversial
> agency, is charged with safeguarding the nation's strategic intelligence
> information and decoding the secret communications of our enemies. For
> only the second time in its nearly 50 year history, the N.S.A. allowed
> cameras inside its Ft. Meade, Maryland, headquarters, and the director,
> Lt. General Michael V. Hayden, sits for a rare interview and addresses
> issues such as privacy. Tune in and find out if Big Brother is watching
> you!
>
>
>