History Looks at the NSA

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41063,00.html

by Declan McCullagh
2:00 a.m. Jan. 9, 2001 PST

WASHINGTON -- As anyone who watched Enemy of the State knows, the
National Security Agency is a rapacious beast with an appetite for
data surpassed only by its disregard for Americans' privacy.

Or is the opposite true, and the ex-No Such Agency staffed by ardent
civil libertarians?

To the NSA, of course, its devilish reputation is merely an
unfortunate Hollywood fiction. Its director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden,
has taken every opportunity to say so, most recently on a History
Channel documentary that aired for the first time Monday evening.

"It's absolutely critical that (Americans) don't fear the power that
we have," Hayden said on the show.

He dismissed concerns about eavesdropping over-eagerness and all but
said the NSA, far from being one of the most feared agencies, has
become one of the most handicapped.

One reason, long cited by agency officials: Encryption. The show's
producers obligingly included stock footage of Saddam Hussein, saying
that the dictator-for-life has been spotted chatting on a 900-channel
encrypted cell phone.

That's no surprise. The NSA, as Steven Levy documents in his new
Crypto book (which the documentary overlooks), has spent the last 30
years trying to suppress data-scrambling technology through export
regulations, court battles, and even personal threats.

Instead of exploring that controversial and timely subject that's tied
to the ongoing debate over privacy online, "America's Most Secret
Agency" instead spends the bulk of an hour on a history of
cryptography starting in World War II. Most of the documentary could
have aired two decades ago, and no critics are interviewed.

One of the few surprises in the otherwise bland show is the NSA's new
raison d'etre -- infowar.

Since its inception in the dark days of the Cold War, the NSA has had
two missions, protecting the government's communications while
tunneling through the ciphers that guard the enemy's. (Occasionally
the two have conflicted.)

"The business we're in is to counter the effectiveness of cyberwar
against our infrastructure," said Michael Jacobs, the NSA's deputy
director for information systems security.

Jacobs cited power grids, transportation, air traffic, energy and
health services as examples of industries "which have information that
is critical to some segment of our society" and must be protected from
terrorists, criminals and hackers.

In the agency's National Cryptologic Strategy for the 21st Century
document, the NSA says it will "develop applications to leverage
emerging technologies and sustain both our offensive and defensive
information warfare capabilities."

One part of the NSA, the Information Systems Security Organization, is
devoted to just that. The group even has an outreach program to take
advantage of the "talents of government and industry partners" in
secure system design, evaluation, and testing. Another program (call
800-688-6115) even offers two-day training classes.

If all this sounds like a tremendously geeky community college, the
NSA doesn't seem to mind. "I'm here to tell you we don't get close to
the Fourth Amendment," says the NSA's Lt. Gen. Hayden.

The Fourth Amendment, as we learned in civics classes, explicitly
prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures, and implicitly allows
reasonable ones. What that means in practice is that the NSA is not
permitted by law to spy on American citizens.

But that broad prohibition, codified in the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, hasn't stopped fears of NSA overzealousness, fueled
by persistent reports of the Echelon data-reporting system.

In early 2000, the House Intelligence committee held hearings after an
outcry over a reported NSA global surveillance system called Echelon.
Few legislators asked tough questions.

In fact, the National Commission on Terrorism recommended last summer
that Congress should give federal police more eavesdropping abilities
and increase the budgets of spy agencies.

ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com
---
To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of
"SIGNOFF ISN".