NSA
My first thought when I saw the PRISM slides was “WTF – contractors?” The classification of the slides was a dead giveaway that they weren’t part of the core NSA mission. I won’t get into why I say that, but anyone else who really worked in the Agency would know what I mean.
NSA was founded because of problems that resulted in a warning about the attack on Pearl Harbor sitting in a State Department in-basket from Friday, December 5th until Monday, December 8th. Military analysts had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, and since is was a diplomatic code, the State Department was the agency notified.
The Agency had two main missions – insuring that US communications were secure, and making sure that the communications of adversaries weren’t. Because it was a military organization, it avoided anything that involved US civilians in the United States. The communications security mission covers all US military installations and all US government installations outside the United States.
The two largest groups of employees in the Agency were mathematicians and linguists, with multiple other specialties. Because of the classified nature of everything the Agency did, the military guards and even the housekeeping staff were Agency employees.
The Agency has managed to stay ‘under the radar’ because mathematicians and enlisted rank linguists don’t attend cocktail parties in Georgetown, or hang around with the media.
That’s what things were like when NSA worked, but things have changed.
June 9, 2013 9 Comments
