National Security Agency: Difference between revisions

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Naturally, in addition to civilian traffic, they also listen in on foreign military and diplomatic traffic as well.

As of 2008, NSA has been directed to help monitor U.S. federal agency computer networks to protect them against attacks.

Since its inception to the present day, the NSA is rumored to have the most powerful collection of computers in the world. While the exact entirety of what they now have is classified, a number of supercomputers they used that they now consider obsolete are in the United States National Cryptologic Museum.

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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]] has reined in the illegal activities is still in doubt.

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.

Before the NSA proper was The Black Chamber, so called in part because of [[The American Black Chamber|the book about it]]. It was established in [[World War ~~One~~]] and had a cover as a civilian coding agency. During the 20's funding was pulled because the secretary of state considered decryption to be unfair. Denied funding, the head of it wrote a book about it and tried to keep it open.

Before the NSA proper was The Black Chamber, so called in part because of [[The American Black Chamber|the book about it]]. It was established in [[World War I]] and had a cover as a civilian coding agency. During the 20's funding was pulled because the secretary of state considered decryption to be unfair. Denied funding, the head of it wrote a book about it and tried to keep it open.

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>

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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 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.

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== 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.}}

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* The 2007 film ''[[Live Free or Die Hard]]'' features NSA agents assisting the FBI Cyber Division, alongside with the main character of the film, John McClane, against an Internet-based terrorist organization who is systematically shutting down the United States.

* The 2007 film ''[[The Simpsons]] Movie'' depicts the NSA listening to and transcribing every telephone and public conversation in the US. This leads to Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie's capture by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

* The 2008 film ''[[Harold ~~and~~ Kumar]] Escape from Guantanamo Bay'' has the Vice Chairman of the NSA providing a rational counterpoint to a rabid Homeland Security agent.

* The 2008 film ''[[Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle]] Escape from Guantanamo Bay'' has the Vice Chairman of the NSA providing a rational counterpoint to a rabid Homeland Security agent.

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[[Category:Big Brother Is Watching This Index]]

[[Category:~~NSA~~]]

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