Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!wucs1!wucfua!jlc
From: jlc@wucfua.wustl.edu (Roving UIUC CS Grad Student)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Soviet Access to Usenet
Keywords: Espionage arpanet
Message-ID: <380@wucfua.wustl.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 88 18:34:37 GMT
References: <8081@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <2672@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <2304@ficc.uu.net> <268@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk>
Reply-To: jlc@wucfua.UUCP (Roving UIUC CS Grad Student)
Organization: Great Cthulu's Starry Wisdom Band
Lines: 52

In article <268@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway CMP RA) writes:
>In article <2304@ficc.uu.net>, peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> 	Country		Internal	External
>> 			(spycatchers)	(spys)
>> 
>> 	USA		FBI		CIA
>
>I've heard of something called the NSA (National Security Agency?)  Where
>does that fit in?

The NSA doesn't fit properly into this scheme. It's much closer to the CIA,
in that it can only operate outside of the US, but it doesn't actually run
spies or anything of the sort. They did try to run ships for a while, but
of the three ships they owned, two (the USS Pueblo, captured during the
Vietnam war (there's a movie about this) and the USS Liberty, destroyed by
the Israelis during the 1973 war) had fates so bad that they gave it up
as a bad idea.

The NSA is an electronic-intelligence agency. Their mission is to intercept
all electronic traffic around the world, especially that of governments.
They do intercept traffic which leaves or enters the US but are forbidden
to intercept purely domestic traffic (this was affirmed several years ago
in a major decision --- I believe Congressional). They are also forbidden
to pass on any intercepts to "police-type" agencies --- i.e., they often
intercept drug trafficing messages from US to South America, but cannot
pass that on to the FBI (another major decision). The actual charter of
the NSA is still heavily classified --- until the early 1980's even the
cover sheet was classified (leading to the definition of NSA as "No Such
Agency"). It was created by presidential order right after WWII, and the
only non-executive types to have seen the charter are a few members of
Congress and, I believe, a few judges.

So the NSA is complementary to the CIA. The CIA collects "human"
intelligence, while the NSA does signal intercepts. The NSA is also the
largest US intelligence agency, and is rumored to have the largest
computer center in the world. Given that five years ago they were said
to have been real-time monitering ALL international phone traffic with
keyword-sensitive equipment listening for catch words and passing on
"interesting" traffic to humans, I suspect that they're doing the same
thing with the Net. It is believed that one of their chartered requirements
is to maintain cryptographic knowledge at least ten years ahead of the
published state of the art (they maintain a de facto absolute right to
deny publication to any work applicable to cryptography done in the US)
and that much of their production computer equipment maintains a similar lead.

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| John L. Coolidge   Internet:jlc@wucfua.wustl.edu    UUCP:jlc@wucfua.uucp |
| "My other account is in Illinois"        I just read news here...        |
| With the exception of included material: All above opinions are mine.    |
| Licensing terms available. Copyright (c) 1988 John L. Coolidge. Copying  |
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