National Security Agency

The National Security Agency is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense. 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. Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage, the NSA does not publicly conduct human-source intelligence gathering.

About National Security Agency in brief

The National Security Agency is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense. 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. Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage, the NSA does not publicly conduct human-source intelligence gathering. The NSA’s actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and the agency’s participation in economic espionage. The agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. In 2013, many of its secret surveillance programs were revealed to the public by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, theNSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people’s movements using cellphones’ metadata. Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA’s ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through \”boomerang routing\”. The NSA, alongside the Central Intelligence Agency, maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIANSA joint Special Collection Service inserts eavesdropping devices in high value targets. SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass “close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering’”.

The agency is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet, which severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program. It was headquartered in Washington, D. C. and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct Congressional authorization. After the disbandment of the U. S. Army cryptographic section of military intelligence, known as MI-8, in 1919, the government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber. The Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial company; it sold codes for business use. Its most notable known success was at the Washington Naval Conference, during which it aided negotiators considerably by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many delegations. Despite the Black Chamber’s initial successes, the agency was shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating, “Gentlemen, do not read’’ The agency’ s decision not to read the telegram traffic of the largest Western Union, the European Union, and several other communications companies. It absorbed the navy’s Cryptanalysis functions in July 1918, and the army cryptographic section in May 1919, and moved to New York. It is now headquartered in D.C. and is under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence. The NSA is entrusted with providing assistance to and the coordination of, SIGINT elements for other government organizations – which are prevented by law from engaging in such activities on their own.

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