Talk:National Security Agency/Archive 2

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What do we exactly mean with the word foreign?

Hi there,
it appears that in this wikipedia article the word foreign has never been singularly hyperlinked.
What do you guys think about hyperlinking it with Alien (law)?
Thanks for your attention.
Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 09:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Se-Linux

Se-Linux should be mentioned. I saw the first argument for its removal, however, SE-Linux is not useless fluff, it is one of the few US Government technologies released into the open source community, and is now part of the Linux kernel. Sephiroth storm (talk) 01:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there are sources online for example on the NSA site that you could use to add this. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

JFK HUSTLER

POL DIPLOMATIC DAI SU' QUA'N 107 POL POLITICAL COAST IVORY COATL FR A JUSTICE FR ALL IS A ATILA. ALEXANDER. vedette-ANDERSEN MB-Mo.o euro € MY TIME IS NOW ATTENTLY TO THE END FR ME... And I hope this last Num —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.185.121.142 (talk) 17:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

budget

In the Puzzle Palace, does it not say that NSA has no budget?

I haven't read Bamford's book, but I can't imagine that those supercomputers were donated out of the goodness of Seymour Cray's heart...he may have meant the NSA's budget was classified. See: [1] — Matt 07:19, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I seem to recall that Bamford's Body of Secrets places the NSA budget at ~$13B and the CIA at ~$3-4B. That figure is clearly out-of-date, but it does give some sense of scale. (I believe it's in the "Heart" chapter near the end.) --A, 8 August 2007

They have no published budget. Even something as simple as how much toilet paper they want to order could give enemies information (how many people use the building, and therefor an estimate of staff). It's all classified. [[User:GregNorc|GregNorc|Talk]]

Their budget is classfied, they do not have to get approval for the money they spend, they just request a large amount of money and hope 90%+ gets approved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.103.20.118 (talk • contribs)

The secret space program, which I believe stemmed from the NSA / CSS now has developed into many avenues... I don't know how much NSA is involved with the trillions+ of $ covertly being used for these private interests and agendas. We need disclosure and truth! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.50.135.161 (talk) 10:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Another budget comment -- it says the NSA is an agency "having a budget much larger than that of the CIA," but doing some Googling makes this claim seem doubtful. http://www.fas.org/irp/commission/budget.htm says the NSA has 3.6 billion and http://www.fas.org/irp/budget/ says the CIA had nearly 30 billion just a few years ago, so I doubt that the NSA's budget is much larger

The first link places the CIA budget at $3.1-$3.2 billion with the NSA budget at $3.6 billion. The second link makes no mention of either specific agency's budget, but merely states that the overall budget for all intelligence was $26.7 billion for FY 1998. Based on that, NSA's budget was bigger than CIA's, and it can be assumed that with its increase in personnel and increased activity in domestic and foreign spying that its budget has increased moreso than CIA's. --Rodzilla (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The FAS estimates come up at the top of Google searches, but these are all just estimates. The numbers for the NSA seem to fall between $3B and $15B, and even the FAS estimates leave the bulk of the US intel budget unidentified. An article on the FAS website suggests $5B. (cite) globalsecurity.org places the number at $7.5B , and the CIA budget at $5B. (cite) Regardless, the figures are all over the place -- there doesn't seem to be any immediately apparent reason why the FAS figures are better estimates. --A, 8 August 2007

I removed the 11 billion figure and replaced it with classified sine we have no way of knowing the true budget —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.172.27.29 (talk) 16:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok someone reversed my edit, there is no reference for this 11 billion dollar figure anywhere to be seen. Having unreferenced information on a critical question of an intelligence agency's budget is unacceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.172.27.29 (talk) 17:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Strategy for the NSA

Hayden and the NSA have a strategy to shift greater reliance on American industry for the purposes of domestic spying (see Gen. Hayden Statement to Congress - see section 27), EFF class action suit Although Gen. Hayden said at the National Press Club that "As the director, I was the one responsible to ensure that this program was limited in its scope and disciplined in its application" [2], his testimony that, "One senior executive confided that the data management needs we outlined to him were larger than any he had previously seen" Gen. Hayden Statement to Congress - see section 27 before the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence) indicates that NSA's database was projected to be considerably larger than AT&T's 300 terabyte "Daytona" database of caller information. The NarusInsight is one type of spying hardware, capable of monitoring of an OC-192 network line in realtime (39,000 DSL lines) or give AT&T the power to monitor all 7,432,000 DSL lines it owns. After data capture, according to Narus, its software can replay, "streaming media (for example, VoIP), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols" (see [3]). China Telecom uses this same type of technology to spy and censor its people in a more primitive way. China telecom has started the process to acquire this technology logistically and financially. Shanghai Telecom seeks system AbrahamLincoln24 05:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The NSA has a strategy to shift greater reliance on American industry for the purposes of domestic spying. The NSA strategy is called project GROUNDBREAKER (see section 27 [4]). (aww somebody didn't like Mr. Haydens transcript its ok I'll fix it)Moreover this strategy is linked to the DOD doctrines called "Fight the net" and "Information Operations Roadmap" ( see [5]). Although eX-director Gen Hayden has said "As the director, I was the one responsible to ensure that this program was limited in its scope and disciplined in its application" (see [6]). Two examples of relying on American industry for the purposes of domestic spying is the use of CALEA (see SEC.103 [7]) (see SEC.106 [8]) on US telecommunication companies and NarusInsight. Under the CALEA Act all US telecommunication companies are forced install hardware capable of monitoring data and voice by May 14 2007. CALEA Act also forces US telecommunication companies to build national technology standards to support CALEA. NarusInsight is one type of spying hardware, capable of monitoring of an OC-192 network line in real-time (39,000 DSL lines) or give AT&T the power to monitor all 7,432,000 DSL lines it owns. After data capture, according to Narus (see [9]), its software can replay, "streaming media (for example, VoIP), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols". China Telecom uses this same type of technology to spy and censor its people in a more primitive way. China telecom has started the process to acquire this technology logistically and financially. Shanghai Telecom seeks system AbrahamLincoln24 01:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This may be an inappropriately judgmental comment, but this section is really, really horrible. It's totally out-of-place, it's not relevant to the overall discussion, it's badly composed, it lacks citation, and it's totally devoid of context. Interpreted liberally, it seems to be a current-events comment about NSA wiretapping activities, which makes it especially inappropriate. Should be yanked; it's astonishing that it's remained this long. --A, 8 August 2007

As I noted when I reverted this paragraph in the main page - Hayden is not the head any more, so why copy a paragraph from his article over to here? — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 03:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

@Revragnarok

Todays NSA strtegy was conceived and implemented by Gen Hayden. It does not matter that he is an ex-head of the NSA today. This is because future NSA directors will have to foallow his stradegy. AbrahamLincoln24 07:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph on strategy needs work. CALEA - the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, give the FBI new authorities, not NSA. FBI can require equipment providers to build in tap capabilities, but CALEA doesn't do anything for NSA, which uses other means to access communications. You might want to note that all big EU countries have authorities similar to CALEA, along with Russia, China, India and Japan. The statement that Hayden is the architect of NSA's strategy - do they even they have a strategy? - needs some explanation. Does it mean a strategy to adjust from collecting on public switch networks to collecting on the internet. It's not a domesitc intelligence strategy. The quote from an unnamed executive about data management doesn't refer to domestic spying, but to the problems NSA has coping with the floods of traffic - voice, email, sms, etc - billions of messages a day (the article could cite the recent Baltimore Sun articles on "Turbulence"). The reference to NarusInsight is puzzling - it's just one technology among many - why is it special? If the article is going to refer to China, it might help to include a link to "Golden Shield," the Chinese domestic surveillance program.

Thank you for helping me make this wiki better. My statement CALEA is not wrong. I think you should read the CALEA law. CALEA law SEC. 102 part (5) "The term `government' means the government of the United States and any agency or instrumentality thereof, the District of Columbia, any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States, and any State or political subdivision thereof authorized by law to conduct electronic surveillance." http://www.askcalea.net/calea/102.html This means any US government agency from the NSA, CIA to believe it or not US Fish and Wildlife Service can conduct electronic surveillance. The law is very wide here. Another point you make is that I do not note other big countries that use a form of CALEA, I did look at the history of this discussion CHINA. That part was removed. The statement that Hayden is the architect of NSA's strategy is true because he said so in US testimony to congress. Please read his testimony pdfs. Lastly you are confused what domestic spying is, I should have been more clear. Using laws to put always on backdoors in software and hardware in all tecom industries on US soil is by definition domestic spying. I will rewrite it make this section more clear. Also I will add more info on the strategy of Gen Hayden from banking to telcoms. I will reference everything I talk about to make this section more clear.

I assume that this is still AbrahamLincoln24; these are not NSA "strategies." They're specific NSA programs that have been implemented under Hayden. You are correct that CALEA is an NSA program, but you seem to be using this notion that it's a "strategy" to shoehorn an extraneous discussion of a controversial NSA program into the article. -- GodelMetric 23:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Question

Does reading the NSA article trigger the NSA to open a file on me? (If one isn't already open...) If so should a warning be given to people before they access the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.221.218 (talk) 20:38, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid the NSA is busy with other things at the moment. Sephiroth storm (talk) 22:55, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

AQUAINT/ Perfect Citizen

Has anybody heard of this?

- http://www-nlpir.nist.gov/projects/aquaint/
- http://www.ai.sri.com/project/aquaint
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/nsa-police.html

It's basically is a datamining system that basically uses artificial intelligence capability to gather information and organize data into dossiers on everybody, then uses inferential reasoning capability to use the information available to determine additional data of extreme detail, ideally to the point that the system could automatically gain insights into the personalities of the people they're looking at, and even be able to determine how their thought processes work, what they would do, what they wouldn't do and so on. It's designed to be able to answer questions in essay form. This system would effectively allow the NSA to gather every single knowable facet of data on everybody. The more data gathered, the more accurate the profile is so they'd have a great reason to collect as much as they could on as many as they could.

This system would be a privacy nightmare the likes the world has never seen, one researcher actually quit, and the guy who created the program did express some concern that this system could be dangerous when made operational.

This may be pretty soon as the NSA is creating a program called "Perfect Citizen" which they are developing alongside Raytheon. The system is allegedly designed to protect computer networks and such, but an internal memo circulated referred to the system as being "Big Brother", and is suspected of being designed for being able to perform massive automatic surveillance and datamining on American Corporations and Citizens. Perfect Citizen may be an active version of AQUAINT

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Citizen
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07...rfect_citizen/
- http://www.networkworld.com/news/201...source=nww_rss
- http://theweek.com/article/index/204...itizen-program
- http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...e-spying-tool/

AVKent882 (talk) 06:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Menwith Hill

Surely Menwith Hill should be mentioned as a major NSA station. It is huge underground. The surrounding area of North Yorkshire is populated with Americans. It may have as many staff as Fort Meade? I'm surprised the phrase 'Menwith Hill' does not appear in the article. It's mostly only pretending to be an RAF station. --81.105.245.251 00:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Is there something useful (and verifiable) that would be contributed by such a mention that isn't already covered by the reference in the ECHELON article? If there is no real purpose in it, then it would just be trivia. The NSA article mentions that there are many facilities; it only names one (and that one over some objections) on the basis of the need to have a link to another related article. — DAGwyn 05:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Very few Americans live around Menwith Hill. Most folks from the U.S. you will meet there are tourists who used to work there before automation took over practically everything.Johnwrd (talk) 02:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

U.S.S. Liberty

One theory on the Mission of U.S.S. Liberty was that Liberty was monitoring the movements and locating Tank Squadron locations in the 6 Day War, (hence her dangerously close location to the War Zone). The Liberty was said to be a N.S.A./U.S.Navy Ship. Liberty could pick up Tank Radio Transmissions, and with other Stations could pin point their location using Radio Triangulation.Johnwrd (talk) 02:28, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Criticisms

Only 1? Lol. Come on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.49.179.37 (talk) 00:27, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Employer of mathematicians

Despite being the world's largest single employer of Ph.D. mathematicians,

Hem. I strongly doubt this. In many countries, the university and research system is government-run, and thus the largest single employer of PhD mathematicians is probably the government of any of those countries. David.Monniaux 20:46, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps, although I'd think it reasonable to class these mathematicians as being employed by whatever institution they work at for this kind of thing. But at the least, I'd like to see a half-decent source for the claim. (With an agency as secretive as the NSA, it's quite difficult to get solid fact, rather than mere speculation. Particularly on this topic, I think we need to be quite careful about citing sources.)

Having done some digging, I've found that NSA themselves claim, "It [NSA] is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States and perhaps the world." [10] and "Currently, we are the largest employer of mathematicians in the country." [11] (Conspicuous lack of "Ph.D.", though.); also "In 1996 we hired 60 mathematicians, 40 with PhD's. In 1997 we made 50 hires, 30 with PhD's, and we expect this trend of aggressive pace of hiring [to continue]. Let me stress that hiring at a pace of 50-60 mathematicians per year (equivalent to a good-sized math department) is a good measure of our commitment to math in an era of declining resources.". [12]. — Matt Crypto 23:12, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As you said, it of course depends how you define "employer".

I think that we should be very prudent with those claims; everything surrounding NSA seems to be based on hearsay. Once, at a conference, I met a NSA researcher in cryptography and I asked him whether they did a lot of fundamental research, like what he was presenting (as opposed to more applied activities); he said that they actually did not. While of course the guy probably could not say anything precise without stumbling into "classified" areas, this, to me, indicates that there are conflicting reports about the real size of the NSA research departments.

Heck the NSA even classified an elliptic curve. Universities are the employeers not the governments themselves. Paychecks ome from the universities themselves. A research grant from the NSF does not mean you are an NSF employee. Timothy Clemans 20:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the NSA probably has an interest in having such rumors etc. floated around, to increase the aura of power that it has. The mere fact that its budget is classified is of the same tendency. David.Monniaux 07:16, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually there really are a large number of professional mathematicians at NSA HQ, and the Research & Engineering building is one of the largest at NSA HQ. Of course much of the work is mission-inspired rather than "of purely academic interest". — DAGwyn 05:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to know how many steaganographers they have Sea level 01:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Several years ago, there was at least one stego group. Presumably it was able to justify its existence. — DAGwyn 05:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

James Bond-style espionage

Several bits of spy fiction (notably the Bond film Die Another Day and the thriller Enemy of the State) have portrayed the NSA as directly involved in the more, well, movie-like side of intelligence. The NSA are exclusively restricted to nerdy stuff, aren't they? They leave the violent derring-do (and more generally, any actual legwork) to the CIA and the armed forces, right? If so, we should probably make that point in the article. --Robert Merkel 14:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I believe you're right, but it'd be great to have a source saying so explicitly. — Matt Crypto 14:06, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago describing black bag jobs to steal codes from foreign consulates. I beleve the article said the operatives worked directly for NSA, but I'm not sure. Also NSA intercept operators sometimes work under dangerous conditions, see, e.g. USS Liberty incident. --agr 15:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

MI5 or MI6 (I forget which) has a webpage dedicated to debunking Hollywood's portrayal (especially James Bond) of espionage. I think it was the FAQ section of the Career/Recruitment page. 205.174.22.28 02:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I can't say NSA does do "super secret" missions. Normally NSA only does regular computer work (not regular, but you get the point). Most NSA missions aren't entirly let of the country (as far as the public knows), It's usually CIA's job to do the "black ops" and "007" things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Goiter*Guru (talk • contribs) 22:48, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Alleged Illegal Activity of the NSA

Since the ACLU has been trying for ages to counter the violations of constitutional rights allegedly done by the NSA I have knowledge concerning this and would be happy to provide it. The following are examples that I know of and for your consideration. You can then determine whether there is any value for including what the ACLU considers an issue for our constitutional rights.

All of these examples concern my writing in on-line science sites that were concerning my writing of 14 science descriptions that proved evolution is scientifically impossible. Another writing of mine was in proving undeniably that Einstein's special relativity is false science. The point in mentioning this is to show the science had absolutely nothing to do with national security.

The first example was where I had found on a Hubble telescope image of Orion that there was a previously unknown planet in the zoomable image. I described this science point on a science site where I was being viciously countered by a leader having the name of WWSCD and six others under that leader. (I later found out WWSCD is World Wide Senior Catastrophe Director of the NSA)

The point is that within 24 hours of when I had written the planet's location the planet had been digitally erased from the picture. The hole was an irregular oval and they patched in a piece of background. You could even see the rough edges of the patch before they soon touched up the edge cut.

The second was another suppression of the science that occurred again within 24 hours. This one was on a Gould astronomy picture that was submitted in the American Astronomy meeting in June 2007.

The picture was described as capturing the light of never-getting-before far-distant stars that were at extreme distances. In other words the stars in the picture background were those supposedly distant stars. The problem in the thinking was that there was an eight-star special grouping of stars that was in a vertical, shriveled football-like shape that was shown on the right side in the foreground. The specific problem is that the same exact grouping of stars was also shown in a much smaller location in the right-side background. That back grouping was at the perfect perspective line location required for the size and back location. In other words the back group was an image of the same exact group of stars.

This picture had the back group digitally changed to no longer match at all.

A third attempt at suppression occurred several times over three years with one of those providing the proof. That was on a day when I was writing science descriptions and, like always, during especially interesting science my telephone would ring in mid-paragraph. On this particular time I noticed a message had been recorded on my answering machine and that call was the only one coming in for the morning.

My procedure when calls came in was that I would stop typing after the ring, then look at the caller ID, and then if the caller is unknown I would go back to typing. The recording was (from a person farther away from the phone) “He stopped typing”. After about three seconds (the same person) “He’s started again”. (A person at the phone) An exasperated sigh from my not answering any of their hundred or so calls.

I won't include the fourth provable proof of this, but in conclusion here I will share the following. Who could have enough ability and "pull" to get those pictures digitally altered in lying science within 24 hours? And, why would non-national security science be attacked?

So, if you are interested I would be glad to write these in a section concerning illegal activity of the NSA. — SteveCrum 17:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.26.57.136 (talk)

By the way, do I need to have the above published in the "NSA Gazette" first? And, I would like to mention that even when I sign in the red signed-in name, etc. at the top of the page disappears as soon as I go to any page after signing in. All later pages have a blue, sign in/create account wording shown. — SteveCrum 19:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.26.181.181 (talk)

HA! You realize that NSA can do whatever they want right? Technically while on that base you have NO rights AT ALL.:D (talk) 22:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

You would need Reliable Sources to confirm. Sephiroth storm (talk) 22:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

June 24 Intro edits

Edited introduction. According NSA.gov the agency mission also includes information assurance and research. Also naming one type of intel (HUMINT) the NSA doesnt produce isn't useful (Why not say the NSA doesnt produce IMINT, etc.). The first paragraph clearly states the NSA produces SIGINT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.72.101 (talk) 13:56, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

"No Such Agency"

Would it be OK to insert and cite the old acronym "No Such Agency" in the heading area? Between the 70's and 90's it was a long-running sarcastic joke. Foxyshadis^(talk) 09:56, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

It pulls up in Google Maps, so the joke is still going on to a certain degree. That said, find a reliable source. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The New York Times is reliable so I added that. -SusanLesch (talk) 19:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it's even in David Kahn's book from 1967, so the joke is quite old. Need to check, though. Nageh (talk) 20:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I checked in Kahn's book, he used the 'Never Say Anything' on page 690 but I didn't find a specific use of 'No Such Agency'. I suspect all the alternate names for the initials go back farther than any source we'd find anyways. Japenfold (talk) 01:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

NSA redirects here?

Looking at the disambig page there are 30 other uses for NSA, 2 of which are the same agency for different countries (U.S. and Norway), one of which is Poland's version of the supreme court, and one of which is a NATO agency. Why would it redirect here instead of being a disambig page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.95.17.119 (talk) 22:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

This NSA is the most commonly referred to NSA in the Anglosphere, by quite a large margin. I assume that is why NSA doesn't redirect to a disambiguation page. I'm not sure I agree that's right though. 78.86.61.94 (talk) 11:58, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with the second IP editor. Sephiroth storm (talk) 12:51, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Ranks

The article states that the NSA is headed by a senior military officer. Are his subordinates also military personnel? As in, would the mathematicians have military ranks? 78.86.61.94 (talk) 11:55, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

NSA is a DoD civilian agency. The Central Security Service staff's the NSA with military personnel. The civilians would not have military ranks. Sephiroth storm (talk) 12:56, 21 July 2012 (UTC)