---
created_at: '2015-03-26T05:35:01.000Z'
title: NSA is monitoring key Internet routers (1996)
url: http://marc.info/?l=best-of-security&m=96843702620513&w=2
author: joshavant
points: 266
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comment_text: 
num_comments: 85
story_id: 
story_title: 
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parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1427348101
_tags:
- story
- author_joshavant
- story_9268000
objectID: '9268000'
year: 1996

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    List:       best-of-security
    Subject:    BoS: NSA is monitoring key internet routers - Puzzle Palace Author
    From:       Julian Assange <proff () suburbia ! net>
    Date:       1996-06-12 10:18:43
    [Download message RAW]
    
    
    The National Security Administration is Poised to Control the Internet
    
    The oppressive atmosphere of Orwell's 1984 arises from the omnipresence of
    Big Brother, the symbol of the government's concern for the individual. Big
    Brother controls the language, outlawing words he dislikes and creating new
    words for his favorite concepts. He can see and hear nearly everything -
    public or private. Thus he enforces a rigid code of speech and action that
    erodes the potential for resistance and reduces the need for force. As Noam
    Chomsky says, propaganda is to democracy what violence is to
    totalitarianism. Control thoughts, and you can easily control behavior.
    
    U.S. history affords a prime example in the era named after Senator Joseph
    McCarthy, though he had many supporters in his attack on freedom of thought
    and speech. Perhaps his most powerful friend was J. Edgar Hoover, who fed
    him material from FBI files (some of it true) which he used to attack
    individuals for their supposed political leanings. By the time of
    Watergate, the CIA had become at least as notorious as the FBI, due largely
    to its assassinations of foreign leaders and support for military coups
    around the world.
    
    Now its the 90's. A computer revolution seems to be happening and with it a
    dramatic increase in people using the Internet, as well as people watching
    what the people use it for. Ever heard of the NSA? This could very well be
    the NSA decade for the Internet. Conspiracy, power struggles and
    survellience of the citizenry may be what is remembered about the NSA
    during this period of time. I used to think democracy meant people keeping
    a watchful eye on its government, not its government keeping a watchful eye
    on its people. Today we can now see comparisons being drawn between the FBI
    of the 50s and the CIA of the 60s, the obvious government corruption in the
    70s, Reagan in the 80s (sorry - that was just incompetence), and the
    emerging role of the NSA in the 90s.
    
    Is NSA Sniffing the Internet? Do they have the jurisdiction? Lets take a
    look back and see what they are all about and make an educated hypothesis.
    
    Budgetary authority for the National Security Agency (NSA) apparently comes
    from the Central Intelligence Act of 1949. This act provides the basis for
    the secret spending program known as the black budget by allowing any arm
    of the government to transfer money to the CIA "without regard to any
    provisions of the law," and allowing the CIA to spend its funds as it sees
    fit, with no need to account for them.
    
    Congress passed the C.I.A. Act despite the fact that only the ranking
    members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees knew anything
    about its contents; the remaining members of Congress were told that open
    discussion, or even clear explanation, of the bill would be
    counterproductive. There were complaints about the secrecy; but in the end
    the bill passed the House by a vote of 348-4, and the Senate by a majority
    voice vote. Hmmmm, it seems several legislative disasters have occurred by
    landslides. Anyone remember the Telecommunication Attack of 1996?
    
    The NSA's estimated $10 billion annual allocation (as of 1990) is funded
    entirely through the black budget. Thus Congress appropriates funds for the
    NSA not only without information on the agency's plans, but without even a
    clear idea of the amount it appropriates; and it receives no accounting of
    the uses to which the funds were put. This naturally precludes any debate
    about the direction or management of such agencies, effectively avoiding
    public oversight while spending public funds. Weiner notes the analogy to
    "Taxation without representation." In any respect, it seems to be
    unconstitutional - a major point that has failed to stop them.
    
    "The NSA has also spent a great deal of time and money spying on American
    citizens. For 21 years after its inception it tracked every telegram and
    telex in and out of the United States, and monitored the telephone
    conversations of the politically suspect." (Weiner, Blank Check)
    
    Due to its unique ability to monitor communications within the U.S. without
    a warrant, which the FBI and CIA cannot legally do, NSA becomes the center
    of attempts to spy on U.S. citizens. Nominally this involves only
    communications in which at least one terminal is outside the U.S., but in
    practice target lists have often grown to include communications between
    U.S. citizens within the country. And political considerations have
    sometimes become important. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that in the NSA's
    Charter they claim to be unable to spy on US citizens. Apparently, the real
    charter is as elusive as what they do with taxpayer money.
    
    The Huston Plan, formally known as "Domestic Intelligence Gathering Plan:
    Analysis and Strategy," was submitted in July 1970 to President Nixon. The
    goal of the plan was to relax some restrictions on intelligence gathering,
    apparently those of NSCID No. 6. Some parts of the intelligence community
    felt that these relaxations would assist their efforts.
    
    Like most intelligence agencies, the NSA uses words such as "interrupt" and
    "target" in a technical sense with a precise but often classified
    definition. This specialized language makes it difficult to legislate or
    oversee the activities involved. For instance, in NSA terms a conversation
    that is captured, decoded if necessary, and distributed to the requesting
    agency is not considered to be the product of eavesdropping unless one of
    the parties to the conversation is explicitly targeted. However, the NSA
    does not depend on semantic defences; it can also produce some legal
    arguments for exempting itself from normal requirements. How convenient.
    
    For those who feel your lives are too flawless to be affected, or for those
    of you who actually vote Republican or Democrat thinking the change will
    come from within (nice try), and for the lowest common denominator -
    dittoheads, this is not a good thing. Complete control over a secret agency
    with at least 60,000 direct employees, a $10 billion budget, direct command
    of some military units, and the ability to read all communications would be
    an enormous weapon with which to maintain tyranny were it to arise. A
    President with a Napoleonic or Stalinistic delusion would find the perfect
    tool for the constant supervision of the individual by the state in the
    NSA; not unlike scenarios depicted in novels such as Orwell's 1984.
    
    ====================================
    1) NSA Homepage
    http://www.nsa.gov:8080/
    
    2) NSA Can Break PGP Encryption
    http://www.quadralay.com/www/Crypt/NSA/break-pgp.html
    
    3) Houston Chronicle Interview
    http://www.quadralay.com/www/Crypt/NSA/letter.html
    
    4) Original Charter of the National Security Agency
    http://www.quadralay.com/www/Crypt/NSA/charter.html
    
    5) CFP'92 - Who Holds the Keys?
    http://www.cpsr.org/dox/conferences/cfp92/denning.html
    
    ====================================
    
    Americans would not have any privacy left, such is the capability to
    monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, or in our case
    email, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this
    government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this
    country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has
    given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny. There would
    be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together
    in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is,
    and would continue to be, within the reach of the government to know. Such
    is the capability of this technology ...
    
    I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the
    capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see
    to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology
    operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross
    over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return...
    
    So, is the NSA 'sniffing' on the Internet? Does their reputation seem
    worthy of our trust and respect? Lets take a look at some of their recent
    plans for Internet communication. Then you can decide for yourself if you
    want to watch the magic act....the "now you see it....now you don't" act
    starring Freedom, of course.
    
    Puzzle Palace co-author Wayne Madsen, in an article written for the June
    1995 issue of Computer Fraud & Security Bulletin (Elsevier Advanced
    Technology Publications), wrote that "according to well-placed sources
    within the Federal Government and the Internet service provider industry,
    the National Security Agency (NSA) is actively sniffing several key
    Internet router and gateway hosts."
    
    Madsen says the NSA concentrates its surveillance on destination and
    origination hosts, as well as "sniffing" for specific key words and
    phrases. He claims his sources have confirmed that the NSA has contracted
    with an unnamed private company to develop the software needed to capture
    Internet data of interest to the agency.
    
    According to Madsen, the NSA monitors traffic primarily at two Internet
    routers controlled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    (NASA), one in College Park, MD (dubbed "Fix East") and another at NASA
    Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, CA ("Fix West").
    
    Other NSA Internet sniffers, he said, operate at busy routers known as Mae
    East (an East Coast hub), Mae West (a West Coast hub), CIX reportedly based
    in San Jose), and SWAB (a northern Virginia router operated by Bell
    Atlantic).
    
    Madsen continues on to say the NSA may also be monitoring traffic at
    network access points (NAPs), the large Internet gateways operated by
    regional and long-distance service providers. The NAPs allegedly under
    surveillance are in Pennsauken, NJ (operated by Sprint), Chicago (run by
    AmeriTech and Bell Communications Research), and San Francisco (Pacific
    Bell).
    
    Madsen claims the NSA has deals with Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to
    prevent anonymous email. "One senior Federal Government source has reported
    that NSA has been particularly successful in convincing key members of the
    US software industry to cooperate with it in producing software that makes
    Internet messages easier for NSA to intercept, and if they are encrypted,
    to decode," Madsen wrote. "A knowledgeable government source claims that
    the NSA has concluded agreements with Microsoft, Lotus and Netscape to
    permit the introduction of the means to prevent the anonymity of Internet
    electronic mail, the use of cryptographic key-escrow, as well as software
    industry acceptance of the NSA-developed Digital Signature Standard (DSS)."
    
    Similarly, according to reports in several trade magazines, the Defense
    Messaging System (DMS) developed by the Pentagon is nearly ready for
    implementation, but prospective users are threatening to shun the universal
    e-mail platform unless Pentagon officials eliminate cumbersome security
    procedures designed by the NSA.
    
    DOD designed DMS a decade ago to replace the aging AUTODIN message system
    and to serve as the armed services' global e-mail infrastructure. Officials
    familiar with DMS' security features, which rely on the National Security
    Agency's Fortezza encryption card, said the system's slowness is likely to
    alienate users who send mostly unclassified messages over commercial e-mail
    systems. Users of wireless systems are also complaining about the high
    overhead.
    
    The DMS adopted the Fortezza card and is expected to implement over 450,000
    cards in the next few years. Inside sources note that the NSA is using the
    DMS as a justification for paying companies such as Microsoft and Netscape
    to adopt the Fortezza card as a standard for their products. NSA has pushed
    agencies such as the CIA, NASA, IRS and the Federal Reserve to adopt
    Fortezza without success.
    
    Cost is also a major factor. Fortezza's PCMCIA cards cost nearly $100 each
    and all computers must be equipped with a card reader that costs an
    additional $150. (Would you like to have to buy a modem or pre-assembled
    computer system that would make it easier for the NSA to monitor your
    communications? Not me!)
    
    Is the NSA really snooping on the Net? If they are, would that violate the
    agency's charter, which specifically prohibits it from spying within the
    US? "Well, Net traffic is routed from God knows where to God knows where
    around the world," says George Washington University Professor Lance
    Hoffman, a professor of Communications and Telecommunications Systems
    Policy at George Washington University. "So if the NSA is doing this, they
    could say they are not violating their charter not to spy in the US. That's
    the thing. Intelligent routers send stuff any which way."
    
    What can be done? - you say. There is a solution. Encryption. Next issue
    will discuss trap doors and your right to encryption as strong as you can
    make it.
    
    ====================================
    6) The Agency That Came in from the Cold
    http://www.ams.org/committee/profession/shaker.html
    
    7) The Codex Surveillance & Privacy Page
    http://www.thecodex.com/
    
    8) Profiles of the U.S. Intelligence Community
    http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/usintel.txt
    
    9) Intelligence and CounterIntelligence
    http://www.kimsoft.com/kim-spy.htm
    
    10) The National Security Administration
    http://hops.cs.jhu.edu/~arvi/nsa.html
    
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    find ***
    ====================================
    
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