Re: public privacy, NSA resources

A fellow cypherpunk lister says about the number of employees
at NSA:
>40,000?  Is this for real? Does anyone know how this would compare to
>FBI or CIA?  Also, does anyone have a clue on the black budget?  The
>author seems to hint here that while it is not "readily discernible" it
>might be inferrable.
>
The number of employees at the FBI is public info. I don't
have it at hand. CIA employment used to be secret, and may
still be. Of course you can buy a picture from SPOT and count
the cars for an estimate. At both agencies, there are a
significant number of contract employees, who are not on the
employment rolls, but are efectively the same as government
employees. They aren't counted in public info.

I can't guess at the number of NSA folks. But I can relate an
story....

I gave a paper at this year's National Computer Security
Conference, in Baltimore. Like all conferences, it had a
registration area, vendor's booths, etc. 

Following form, it had nice folks behind counters with signs
over the top, with the usual:
	Prepaid A-F | Prepaid G-M | .... | Walkup | Press | ...

sections. What surprized me was the row of counters labeled:
NSA A-E | NSA F-H | ..... NSA W-Z

There were as many NSA booths as all the rest combined. (ok,
+- 10%) 

Another aside. The NCSC is essentially a front for the NSA.
NCSC exists but has no more than two employees, one is the
secretary to an NSA official.

Pat


Pat Farrell,      Grad Student                       pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
PGP key available via finger or request           #include standard.disclaimer

>Another aside. The NCSC is essentially a front for the NSA.
>NCSC exists but has no more than two employees, one is the
>secretary to an NSA official.

Extremely interesting. What  does NCSC stand for?

I am doubtful of the 40,000 figure even with contract employees. That's
a small army. What the hell could keep that many people busy? (shudder)

Do you know much about MITRE?  It has a high net profile and I was
wondering if it is a cover for something else too.

someone with a long net address, included in the "To:" field, writes:
(quoting someone else)

> >Another aside. The NCSC is essentially a front for the NSA.
> >NCSC exists but has no more than two employees, one is the
> >secretary to an NSA official.
> 
> Extremely interesting. What  does NCSC stand for?

National Computer Security Center. 

Send a letter requesting to be added to the distribution list of the
"Orange Book"-related materials (frequent updates to a set of
guidelines on computer security protocols, the most famous being one
with an orange cover, hence the name), and you will start receiving a
lot of stuff from them.

The address:

The INFOSEC Awareness Office can be reached at:

Department of Defense
National Security Agency
ATTN: S332
9800 Savage Road
Ft. George Meade, MD 20755-6000

or phone 301-766-8729

(these are the numbers I used a couple of years ago...your mileage may vary.)

> I am doubtful of the 40,000 figure even with contract employees. That's
> a small army. What the hell could keep that many people busy? (shudder)

NSA occupies two very large office buildings, including the longest
corridor in the world (a mile, if I recall correctly, but my copy of
"The Puzzle Palace" is not handy). I went and took a look, and can
confirm the parking lot is _huge_.

The 40,000 figure may or may not be accurate, as the NSA won't say.
Some say the employment is closer to 100,000. Certainly it is much
higher than that of the CIA.  Bear in mind that they are the nation's
primary SIGINT facility, operating the various listening posts in
conjunction with military personnel (via Army Security Agency, Naval
Security Group, Air Forc, etc.).

As always, read James Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace," which gets
referred to a lot on this list.

> Do you know much about MITRE?  It has a high net profile and I was
> wondering if it is a cover for something else too.

MITRE, derived from "MIT REsearch," is one of several defense-oriented
think tanks, the others being RAND Corporation ("R & D," not Ayn Rand!),
Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), etc. The Communications Research
Division of IDA, located at Princeton, was formed in 1956 to help the
NSA. Lots of famous mathematicians, including Barkley Rosser, Andrew
Gleason, and others.

This shadowy world of defense think tanks is a subject unto itself.


-- 
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Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: waiting for the dust to settle.