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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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 | | allowed if and only if attributed. All other rights reserved. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------