Misplaced Pages

#613386

80-695: The Counterterrorism Mission Center was established as the Counterterrorism Center in February 1986, under the CIA's Directorate of Operations, with Duane Clarridge as its first director. It was an "interdisciplinary" body; many of its personnel and chiefs were drawn from the CIA's Directorate of Operations, but others came from the Directorates of Intelligence and Science and Technology. Observing that terrorism knew no geographical boundaries,

160-571: A transparent process for replacing the outdated Data Encryption Standard (DES) by an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Cybersecurity policy expert Susan Landau attributes the NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academia in the selection of the AES in 2000—and the Agency's support for the choice of a strong encryption algorithm designed by Europeans rather than by Americans—to Brian Snow , who

240-546: A "wake-up call" for the need to invest in the agency's infrastructure. In the 1990s the defensive arm of the NSA—the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD)—started working more openly; the first public technical talk by an NSA scientist at a major cryptography conference was J. Solinas' presentation on efficient Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithms at Crypto 1997. The IAD's cooperative approach to academia and industry culminated in its support for

320-714: A 2010 article in The Washington Post , "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7  billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases." Because of its listening task, NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of predecessor agencies which had broken many World War II codes and ciphers (see, for instance, Purple , Venona project , and JN-25 ). In 2004, NSA Central Security Service and

400-603: A file xkeyscorerules100.txt, sourced by German TV stations NDR and WDR , who claim to have excerpts from its source code) reveal that the NSA tracks users of privacy-enhancing software tools, including Tor ; an anonymous email service provided by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and readers of the Linux Journal . Linus Torvalds ,

480-541: A major effort to secure tactical communications among U.S. forces during the war with mixed success. The NESTOR family of compatible secure voice systems it developed was widely deployed during the Vietnam War , with about 30,000 NESTOR sets produced. However, a variety of technical and operational problems limited their use, allowing the North Vietnamese to exploit and intercept U.S. communications. In

560-482: A matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and the agency's participation in economic espionage . In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden , a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed that

640-592: A memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland. The memorial is a, "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology". NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for the memorial. NSA's infrastructure deteriorated in the 1990s as defense budget cuts resulted in maintenance deferrals. On January 24, 2000, NSA headquarters suffered

720-477: A result of the boomerang routing of Canadian Internet service providers . A document included in NSA files released with Glenn Greenwald 's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and other NSA units gain access to hardware. They intercept routers , servers , and other network hardware being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they are delivered. This

800-457: A secret filing system that was destroyed in 1974. Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon , there were several investigations into suspected misuse of FBI, CIA and NSA facilities. Senator Frank Church uncovered previously unknown activity, such as a CIA plot (ordered by the administration of President John F. Kennedy ) to assassinate Fidel Castro . The investigation also uncovered NSA's wiretaps on targeted U.S. citizens. After

880-513: A series of flights over Afghanistan by Predator drones, under the joint control of the U.S. Air Force and the CTC, produced probable sightings of bin Laden. CTC Director Black advocated arming Predators with missiles to try to launch a targeted killing of bin Laden, but there were legal and technical issues. Black continued to lobby for Predators armed with adapted Hellfire anti-tank missiles under

SECTION 10

#1732790479614

960-403: A total network outage for three days caused by an overloaded network. Incoming traffic was successfully stored on agency servers, but it could not be directed and processed. The agency carried out emergency repairs for $ 3  million to get the system running again. (Some incoming traffic was also directed instead to Britain's GCHQ for the time being.) Director Michael Hayden called the outage

1040-662: A transfer to CTC in 2001. Her first day was September 11, 2001. She continued at CTC for three years following the attacks. In 2015, the Director of CIA John Brennan introduced sweeping changes to the agency in a modernization effort. In addition to creating the first new directorate for the agency in nearly fifty years, many changes surrounded the creation of 10 new "mission centers" modeled on CTC, which combine analysts and operators in hybrid units focused on specific regions or security threats. Most track longstanding CIA assignments, with centers devoted to weapons proliferation, such as

1120-581: Is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet , which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program . The NSA, alongside the CIA, maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIA/NSA joint Special Collection Service (a highly classified intelligence team) inserts eavesdropping devices in high-value targets (such as presidential palaces or embassies). SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, [and] breaking and entering". Unlike

1200-531: Is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense , under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with

1280-937: Is believed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian to be the model for the comprehensive worldwide mass archiving of communications which NSA is engaged in as of 2013. A dedicated unit of the NSA locates targets for the CIA for extrajudicial assassination in the Middle East. The NSA has also spied extensively on the European Union, the United Nations, and numerous governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America, and Asia. In June 2015, WikiLeaks published documents showing that NSA spied on French companies. WikiLeaks also published documents showing that NSA spied on federal German ministries since

1360-698: The Department of State , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the investigation led to improvements and its redesignation as the National Security Agency. The National Security Council issued a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 . On

1440-715: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when within U.S. borders. Alleged Echelon-related activities, including its use for motives other than national security, including political and industrial espionage , received criticism from countries outside the UKUSA alliance. The NSA was also involved in planning to blackmail people with " SEXINT ", intelligence gained about a potential target's sexual activity and preferences. Those targeted had not committed any apparent crime nor were they charged with one. To support its facial recognition program,

1520-690: The Japanese Red Army , another concentrated on Sunni Islamist radicalism , primarily in Algeria . Former CTC Director Cofer Black illustrates the evolution of the organization's priorities throughout the 1990s during the 9/11 commission , explaining: During the early and mid-1990's, al-Qa'ida was not our principal counterterrorism target. Until September 11, Hizballah had killed more Americans than any terrorist group. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad , Hamas , Shining Path in Peru , Abu Saayef in

1600-771: The NSA , the FBI, and other partners. Once Cofer Black had finalized his operational plan, Charles E. Allen , associate deputy director of Central Intelligence for Collection, created a dedicated al-Qaeda cell with officers from across the intelligence community. This cell met daily, focusing on penetrating the Afghan sanctuary and ensuring that collection initiatives were synchronized with operational plans. Allen met with Tenet every week to review initiatives. The CIA increasingly concentrated its diminished resources on counterterrorism, so resources for this activity increased sharply, in contrast to

1680-753: The National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to expand the NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program. As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008, by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of

SECTION 20

#1732790479614

1760-706: The U.S. Army cryptographic section of military intelligence known as MI-8, the U.S. government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber , in 1919. The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization. Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however,

1840-639: The US Court of Appeals . The court also added that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth. NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential, or secret government communications. According to

1920-465: The protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems . The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine . The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees. Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II , it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of

2000-486: The 1990s. Even Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel 's cellphones and phones of her predecessors had been intercepted. Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 that between February 8 and March 8, 2013, the NSA collected about 124.8  billion telephone data items and 97.1  billion computer data items throughout the world, as was displayed in charts from an internal NSA tool codenamed Boundless Informant . Initially, it

2080-604: The Black Chamber access to cable traffic of foreign embassies and consulates. Soon, these companies publicly discontinued their collaboration. Despite the Chamber's initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson , who defended his decision by stating, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." During World War II , the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS)

2160-495: The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage , the NSA does not publicly conduct human intelligence gathering . The NSA is entrusted with assisting with and coordinating, SIGINT elements for other government organizations—which are prevented by Executive Order from engaging in such activities on their own. As part of these responsibilities,

2240-543: The CIA-vetted officers from the host nations serving in the CTICs. In December 1998, CIA chief George Tenet "declared war" on Osama bin Laden. Early in 1999, Tenet ordered the CTC to conduct a review of the CIA's operational strategy to create "a new, comprehensive plan of attack" against al-Qaeda. By mid-September, the result of this review, known simply as "The Plan", had been briefed to CIA operational level personnel and

2320-587: The CTC was designed to cut across the traditional region-based bodies of the CIA. Discredited by the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, the original aims later gave way to a more analytical role. This did not prevent the Center from contemplating an "Eagle" drone aircraft project in 1986–7, which could have been used to spy on hostage-takers in Lebanon . The idea was unrealistic in terms of the technical abilities of

2400-689: The Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was passed. This was designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States . In 1986, the NSA intercepted the communications of the Libyan government during the immediate aftermath of the Berlin discotheque bombing . The White House asserted that the NSA interception had provided "irrefutable" evidence that Libya

2480-475: The Cold War, it became the largest of the U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, but information available as of 2013 indicates that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) pulled ahead in this regard, with a budget of $ 14.7 billion. The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end. The NSA

Counterterrorism Mission Center - Misplaced Pages Continue

2560-742: The Intelligence Community for having a similar and sometimes overlapping mission with what they see as the territory better left to their units like CTMC, the Trump administration 's more significant move to downsize NCTC was less surprising to most than the abrupt dismissal. Travers' deputy on loan from the National Security Agency was also relieved in the shakeup and returned to a position at NSA. In November 2020, president-elect Joe Biden reportedly considered Darrell M. Blocker , who served as former deputy director of

2640-606: The Mission Center, as a candidate for the role of CIA Director. Duane Clarridge Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.236 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 969600660 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 10:41:19 GMT National Security Agency The National Security Agency ( NSA )

2720-590: The NSA is intercepting "millions of images per day". The Real Time Regional Gateway is a data collection program introduced in 2005 in Iraq by the NSA during the Iraq War that consisted of gathering all electronic communication, storing it, then searching and otherwise analyzing it. It was effective in providing information about Iraqi insurgents who had eluded less comprehensive techniques. This "collect it all" strategy introduced by NSA director, Keith B. Alexander ,

2800-447: The NSA that allowed the export of a version that supported stronger keys with 64 bits, but 24 of the bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. This strengthened the protection for users of Notes outside the US against private-sector industrial espionage , but not against spying by the US government. While it is assumed that foreign transmissions terminating in

2880-498: The NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cell phones metadata . Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through " boomerang routing ". The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I . A code and cipher decryption unit

2960-498: The NSA was a trusted partner with academia and industry in the development of cryptographic standards started to come to an end when, as part of the change in the NSA in the post-September 11 era, Snow was replaced as Technical Director, Jacobs retired, and IAD could no longer effectively oppose proposed actions by the offensive arm of the NSA. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks , the NSA created new IT systems to deal with

3040-531: The NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy, the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency". In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in expanding U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War by providing evidence of a North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer USS  Maddox during the Gulf of Tonkin incident . A secret operation, code-named " MINARET ",

3120-567: The NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog, after implanting Cottonmouth, the NSA can establish a network bridge "that allows the NSA to load exploit software onto modified computers as well as allowing the NSA to relay commands and data between hardware and software implants." NSA's mission, as outlined in Executive Order 12333 in 1981, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning

3200-561: The National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) during a surprise reshuffle. Reports initially suggested he was fired to be replaced by Christopher C. Miller . While ODNI insisted Travers was afforded the opportunity to return to CIA, former coworkers insisted to the Washington Post that he was afforded only the chance to retire. Long seen as redundancy by some in departments of the constituent agencies of

3280-472: The Near East. These centers essentially replicated the structure of CTC, which by 2015 had grown in size and mission from the war on terror. The changes narrowed CTC's scope, led to the reassignment of its director, Michael D'Andrea , to the newly formed Iran Mission Center, and gave CTC a new name, the Mission Center for Counterterrorism. The name was in line with the nine other announced mission centers, but

Counterterrorism Mission Center - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-644: The Philippines , 17 November in Greece , were all threats to Americans or American interests. Personnel and financial resources, management attention, and policymaker interest were spread among these groups. In January 1996, the CTC opened the Bin Laden Issue Station to track Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda , with Michael Scheuer , formerly in charge of the CTC's Islamic Extremist Branch, as its first head. The reasons were similar to those for

3440-597: The U.S. (such as a non-U.S. citizen accessing a U.S. website) subject non-U.S. citizens to NSA surveillance, recent research into boomerang routing has raised new concerns about the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries. Boomerang routing occurs when an Internet transmission that originates and terminates in a single country transits another. Research at the University of Toronto has suggested that approximately 25% of Canadian domestic traffic may be subject to NSA surveillance activities as

3520-598: The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the International Organization for Standardization (aka ISO). This memo appears to give credence to previous speculation by cryptographers at Microsoft Research . Edward Snowden claims that the NSA often bypasses encryption altogether by lifting information before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted. XKeyscore rules (as specified in

3600-511: The ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's transmitted civilian telephone, fax, and data traffic. During the early 1970s, the first of what became more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed at Menwith Hill. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell reported in 1988 on the " ECHELON " surveillance program, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence SIGINT , and detailed how

3680-526: The aftermath of the Watergate scandal , a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Senator Frank Church revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's SIGINT intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock . The NSA tracked these individuals in

3760-803: The agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. To further ensure streamlined communication between the signals intelligence community divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service. The NSA's actions have been

3840-538: The eavesdropping operations worked. On November 3, 1999, the BBC reported that they had confirmation from the Australian Government of the existence of a powerful "global spying network" code-named Echelon, that could "eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet" with Britain and the United States as the chief protagonists. They confirmed that Menwith Hill was "linked directly to

3920-527: The equivalent agencies in the United Kingdom ( Government Communications Headquarters ), Canada ( Communications Security Establishment ), Australia ( Australian Signals Directorate ), and New Zealand ( Government Communications Security Bureau ), otherwise known as the UKUSA group, was reported to be in command of the operation of the so-called ECHELON system. Its capabilities were suspected to include

4000-405: The establishment of the CTC itself. Unlike the traditional country-based ones, the new station was not geographically limited and drew its personnel from across the U.S. intelligence community. Geoffrey O'Connell was Director of the CTC from 1997 until Cofer Black became Director in June 1999 as part of a reshuffle by CIA chief George Tenet , who was embarking on a plan to deal with al-Qaeda. At

4080-524: The federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism . A part of the NSA's mission is to serve as a combat support agency for the Department of Defense. Operations by the National Security Agency can be divided into three types: "Echelon" was created in the incubator of the Cold War . Today it is a legacy system , and several NSA stations are closing. NSA/CSS, in combination with

SECTION 50

#1732790479614

4160-421: The fight against al-Qaeda. The CIA geared up to take the lead in the attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan . The Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team (NALT) team, led by Gary Schroen , entered the country once more on September 26. A new branch was added to the CTC, named CTC Special Operations, or CTC/SO, headed by Henry Crumpton , to locate and destroy al-Qaeda resources. Execution of this mission

4240-504: The flood of information from new technologies like the Internet and cell phones. ThinThread contained advanced data mining capabilities. It also had a "privacy mechanism"; surveillance was stored encrypted; decryption required a warrant. The research done under this program may have contributed to the technology used in later systems. ThinThread was canceled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer , which did not include ThinThread's privacy system. Trailblazer Project ramped up in 2002 and

4320-410: The founder of Linux kernel , joked during a LinuxCon keynote on September 18, 2013, that the NSA, who is the founder of SELinux , wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus' father, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), revealed that the NSA actually did this. When my oldest son was asked the same question: "Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at

4400-445: The general trend. At least some of the Plan's more modest aspirations were translated into action. Intelligence collection efforts on bin Laden and al-Qaeda increased significantly from 1999. Beginning in September 1999, the CTC picked up multiple signs that bin Laden had set in motion major terrorist attacks for the turn of the year. The CIA set in motion what Black later described as the "largest collection and disruption activity in

4480-414: The headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland". NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibited the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons , entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission from the United States Attorney General when the subject is located abroad, or

4560-600: The history of mankind". They focused on known al-Qaeda terrorists and on senior personnel both inside and outside Afghanistan. Amid this activity, in November–December 1999, Mohamed Atta , Marwan al-Shehhi , Ziad Jarrah , and Nawaf al-Hazmi visited Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda selected them for the 9/11 operation. In late 1999, the NSA picked up traces of an "operational cadre" consisting of al-Hazmi, his younger brother Salem , and Khalid al-Mihdhar , who were planning to go to Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia , in January 2000. A CTC officer sought permission to conduct surveillance on

4640-476: The men. At about this time, the SOCOM - DIA data mining operation " Able Danger " also identified a potential al-Qaeda unit, consisting of the future leading 9/11 hijackers, and termed them the "Brooklyn cell". The operation found five cells, including two of the three cells involved in the 9/11 attack. The CIA erratically tracked al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar as they traveled to and attended the al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000. In autumn 2000,

4720-419: The new Bush administration in 2001. On Black's advice, Director George Tenet raised the matter at the long-awaited Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting on terrorism on September 4, 2001, and received authorization to deploy the system. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, some CTC staff were exempted from an order to evacuate the CIA headquarters building at Langley. They included

4800-434: The reorganization. In 2017, the Agency announced the creation of the Korea Mission Center, the 11th such group modeled on the structure of CTC, charged with tackling the threat posed by North Korea . In March 2020, the Trump administration acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennell relieved CTMC Deputy Chief of Analysis and 40-year intelligence veteran Russel Travers from his position as Acting Director of

4880-406: The same day, Truman issued a second memorandum that called for the establishment of the NSA. The actual establishment of the NSA was done by a November 4 memo by Robert A. Lovett , the Secretary of Defense , changing the name of the AFSA to the NSA, and making the new agency responsible for all communications intelligence. Since President Truman's memo was a classified document, the existence of

SECTION 60

#1732790479614

4960-556: The same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, everybody understood that the NSA had approached him. IBM Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for client-server and server–server authentication and encryption of data. Until US laws regulating encryption were changed in 2000, IBM and Lotus were prohibited from exporting versions of Notes that supported symmetric encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with

5040-409: The same time, Tenet made one of his executives, Richard Blee, head of the unnamed section in charge of the Bin Laden Station. Paul Pillar became chief of analysis in 1993; by 1997, he was the center's deputy director. But in the summer of 1999, he suffered a clash of styles with Cofer Black. Soon after, Pillar left the organization. He was replaced as deputy director by Ben Bonk . Henry Crumpton

5120-505: The shift of the Global Response Center on the exposed sixth floor, which Black had argued was essential to keep operating during the crisis. Tenet finally agreed with Black that their lives would be put at risk. The CTC obtained passenger lists from the planes used in the attack and identified Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi , whose names they had first linked with terrorism in the winter of 1999–2000. Tenet later proposed inserting CIA teams into Afghanistan to assist local warlords in

5200-481: The time. Still, it can be compared to the Predator drone eventually inaugurated in 2000. Notable early members included Vincent Cannistraro , Chief of Operations and Analysis from 1988 to 1991, Robert Baer , from the Directorate of Operations, and Stanley Bedlington, a "senior analyst." In the early 1990s, the CTC had no more than a hundred personnel, divided into about a dozen branches. Besides branches specializing in Lebanon's Hezbollah , and secular groups like

5280-404: The unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the Navy's cryptanalysis functions in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918 , and the army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley. After the disbandment of

5360-406: Was behind the bombing, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited as a justification for the 1986 United States bombing of Libya . In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information'. That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor ,

5440-402: Was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers . When the war ended, the SIS was reorganized as the Army Security Agency (ASA), and it was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence. On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). This organization

5520-466: Was criticized by members of the agency, even otherwise in support of the changes, for being clunky. With the move, the role of Director of the Counterterrorism Center was renamed Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Mission Center, and Chris Wood was the first to occupy the newly renamed office. Reviews of the implementation of the changes at CTMC and elsewhere with the new mission centers have been mixed, with parochialism reportedly continuing to belabor

5600-423: Was described by an NSA manager as "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they preposition access points into hard target networks around the world." Computers seized by the NSA due to interdiction are often modified with a physical device known as Cottonmouth. Cottonmouth is a device that can be inserted in the USB port of a computer to establish remote access to the targeted machine. According to

5680-406: Was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section, which was also known as the Cipher Bureau. It was headquartered in Washington, D.C., and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct congressional authorization. During the war, it was relocated in the army's organizational chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that point,

5760-471: Was head of operations in the late 1990s, and came back after 9/11 as chief of a new Special Operations section. In the late 1990s, the CIA began to set up Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers , in collaboration with the intelligence services of individual countries, to deal with Islamist militants. The CTICs spread widely after the September 11, 2001 attacks , existing in more than two dozen countries by 2005. The local CIA chief of station usually supervises

5840-492: Was nowhere more evident than at Qala-i-Jangi , a 19th-century fortress on the outskirts of the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif , when it fell to American allies. The Global Response Staff (GRS) , a paramilitary security wing of the CIA Directorate of Support, was created after 9/11. The CIA also created Scorpions , an Iraqi paramilitary force. Gina Haspel , who would later become CIA Director, requested

5920-553: Was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The AFSA was tasked with directing the Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units. However, the AFSA was unable to centralize communications intelligence and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests, such as

6000-526: Was reported that some of these data reflected eavesdropping on citizens in countries like Germany, Spain, and France, but later on, it became clear that those data were collected by European agencies during military missions abroad and were subsequently shared with NSA. In 2013, reporters uncovered a secret memo that claims the NSA created and pushed for the adoption of the Dual EC DRBG encryption standard that contained built-in vulnerabilities in 2006 to

6080-523: Was set up by the NSA to monitor the phone communications of Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker , as well as key leaders of the civil rights movement , including Martin Luther King Jr. , and prominent U.S. journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War . However, the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its Minaret program was "disreputable if not outright illegal". The NSA mounted

6160-547: Was the Technical Director of IAD and represented the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition, and Michael Jacobs , who headed IAD at the time. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the NSA believed that it had public support for a dramatic expansion of its surveillance activities. According to Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes , the period when

6240-417: Was to be a realization of information processing at higher speeds in cyberspace. The massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic, was revealed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosures were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . On 4 September 2020, the NSA's surveillance program was ruled unlawful by

6320-559: Was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations. At the Washington Naval Conference , it aided American negotiators by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the conference delegations, including the Japanese . The Black Chamber successfully persuaded Western Union , the largest U.S. telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies, to illegally give

6400-697: Was worked on by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Boeing , Computer Sciences Corporation , IBM , and Litton Industries . Some NSA whistleblowers complained internally about major problems surrounding Trailblazer. This led to investigations by Congress and the NSA and DoD Inspectors General . The project was canceled in early 2004. Turbulence started in 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive "test" pieces, rather than one grand plan like Trailblazer. It also included offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as Trailblazer. It

#613386