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The '''National Security Agency'''/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is a communications intelligence agency of the United States government, administered as part of the United States Department of Defense.
The NSA is extremely active in cryptology, and cryptanalysis. The agency creates codes and ciphers for its government to use, and attempts to break the codes and ciphers of foreign nations.
The NSA is rumored to run the [[Sinister Surveillance|ECHELON communications-monitoring system,]] together with equivalent signals-intelligence agencies in Britain (GCHQ) and Australia DSD). The system's capabilities are suspected to include the ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's telephone, fax and data traffic, according to a December 16, 2005 article in the ''[[American Newspapers|New York Times]]''. As of the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013-2014, this is no longer rumor; the NSA is now known to have been and continues to be conducting vast data-acquisition programs against practically every form of communication known to man, with very little oversight. The head of the NSA was actually caught lying to Congress about the staggering scope of the NSA's various programs. At the time of this writing they are rapidly gaining a reputation as a rogue agency that believes its mission puts it above the law and the United States Constitution.
Naturally, in addition to civilian traffic, they also listen in on foreign military and diplomatic traffic as well.
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NSA's work is limited to communications intelligence; it does not perform field or human intelligence activities. So, no [[Secret Police]].
By law, NSA's intelligence gathering is limited to foreign communications, although there have been numerous reports that the agency does not always abide by these laws. [[George W. Bush]] famously removed most of the limits on the NSA, even though it was illegal. Some, but not all, of this illegal activity was made legal after the fact when he pushed Congress to modify the laws. Whether or not [[Barack Obama]]
The creation of NSA was authorized in a letter written by President [[Harry Truman|Harry S. Truman]] in June 1952. The agency was formally established through a revision of National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 on October 24, 1952, and officially came into existence on November 4, 1952. President Truman's letter was itself classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation.
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For a long period of time, the U.S. government denied the existence of the NSA, thus the "No Such Agency" moniker.<ref>The NSA was listed in the 1957 and subsequent editions of the U.S. Government Manual, which was available in most public libraries</ref>
Because of this mystery, the NSA has become the agency of choice for many [[Government Conspiracy]] and Hollywood spy types, and is one of the most widely misrepresented government agencies in fiction. In late 2013, this turned out to be [[Truth in Television]] when whistleblower Edward Snowden began releasing a steady stream of documents revealing that the NSA had, since the early 2000s, managed to compromise just about every communications channel on the planet, and was [[Sinister Surveillance|collecting petabytes of data on virtually ''every'' conversation or communication in the world]].
Certain movies or TV series will play up inter-department rivalry between the NSA and their better known sister-agencies, the [[CIA|Central Intelligence Agency]] and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes a movie or TV show will haphazardly blur these agencies together into "generic government conspiracy Men in Black". In reality, the rough difference between them is that the NSA handles "SIGINT" (signals intelligence: wiretapping, cryptography, etc.) while the CIA handles "HUMINT" (human intelligence: actually sending in human operatives for face-to-face contact). For example, if at the end of a movie the bad guy's right-hand lieutenant shoots him and reveals that he was an "NSA double-agent" the entire time, that's an anachronism: its the CIA that sends in human information gathering agents. In terms of structure, the NSA is part of the Department of Defense, while the FBI is part of the Department of Justice. The CIA is an independent agency answering directly to the Director of National Intelligence.
{{examples|The NSA in fiction:}}
== Anime and Manga ==▼
▲== Anime ==
* The NSA get involved in the ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' "El Baile de la Muerte" arc (turned into the ''Roberta's Blood Trail'' [[OVA]]). They turn out to have been backing the US military Grey Fox unit with intel to aid in the War on Drugs. Apparently, the end goal is an attempt to gain influence and test an NSA/Special ops coalition as a way of partially supplanting the CIA's duties in that field. {{spoiler|Eda, who is a CIA agent, teams up with Roberta and Mr. Chang, turning their mission to Roanapur into a Charlie Foxtrot and effectively killing that coalition.}}
== Film ==
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== Live
* In the 1968 ''[[Star Trek:
* The 1998-2001 UPN TV series ''[[Seven Days]]'' followed a fictional "special branch" of the NSA - "BACKSTEP" - involved with using time travel for national security.
* In the third episode of
* While the title character in ''[[Chuck]]'' is a CIA agent of sorts, his team is a joint CIA-NSA operation answering to an official in both agencies {{spoiler|until the CIA liason to the team gets killed, and never replaced. From then on, Team Bartowski just talks to the NSA's General Beckman.}}
* In the first season of [[Dollhouse]], {{spoiler|Dominic}} is revealed to be an NSA agent.
* In season three of ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'', Vaughn's wife Lauren Reed is an NSA agent. Naturally, she's {{spoiler|a [[
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