National Security Agency: Difference between revisions
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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> |
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. |
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. |
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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. |
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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