Word: nsa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...students (both carried out with the cooperation of various academics) and the use of scholars to analyze, collect or even publish information for the agency. A fourth activity, covert support of "moderate" students' groups, gradually wound down after revelations in 1967 showed covert funding for the National Student Association (NSA...
Officials at the National Security Agency were so impressed that they offered the inventors research contracts. When the foursome declined, the agency asked them to sign on as consultants. They refused again. But then the U.S. Patent Office rejected their application for a patent. Reason: NSA had decided that the sale of phasorphones might endanger national security. The agency was willing to reconsider, however, if the inventors would explain how the scrambler works...
...does the device threaten U.S. security? The answer, NSA replied in the spirit of catch-22, is classified. The inventors have invested $30,000 in their project and received nothing in return. Complains Raike: "We feel that the Government has illegally seized our property...
...also apparently exerted behind-the-scenes pressure to make the IBM system less secure than it might have been. It fixed the length of the key at 56 bits of computer information rather than, say, 128, which would have been far more difficult to decipher. In both cases, NSA appears to have acted out of the same motive: sensitive to its intelligence responsibilities, it does not want either foreign governments or private groups to learn codes that it cannot break...
...budget has grown to an estimated $10 billion (v. the $7 billion that the U.S. spends on the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies), and its roster, which approaches half a million employees, has grown dramatically since 1974. Western experts believe it has five times as many people involved in foreign intelligence as the CIA and Western European spy agencies combined...