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The incredible controversy over the "revelation" of NSA activities brings to mind a bit of history!
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The incredible controversy over the "revelation" of NSA activities brings to mind a bit of history!
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HENRY L. STIMSON. As secretary of state under Herbert Hoover, closed the Department of States code-breaking office, the so-called Black Chamber, in 1929. The Black Chamber was a Cryptanalysis shop (Code breakers) giving the U.S. Government a critical insight on what adversaries were doing, and what they intended to do; when questioned as to why he ended this most critically important intelligence function, he is quoted as saying "Gentlemen do not read each others mail" Such a short sighted view of the real world, has a devastating effect on National Security!
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I highly recommend the book: The American Black Chamber a 1931 publication by Herbert O. Yardley. The book describes the inner workings of the interwar American governmental cryptography organization called the Black Chamber. The cryptography historian David Kahn called the book "the most famous book on cryptology ever published."
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By describing the inter workings of the organization, the book created large public awareness of the United States' cryptographic abilities.
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In particular, the Japanese government became aware of the extent of experience the American government had with cryptography and increased the strength of the their own knowledge in cryptography in response.
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This is yet another example of the devastating result of unauthorized leaks of sensitive information, as the unauthorized book undoubtedly cost the United States significantly in blood and treasure in the Pacific theater against Japan in World War II
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The criticism about the NSA program(s) is incredibly misplaced, The outcome of War and Peace in the Terrorist age will depend critically upon our ability to collect and exploit information in real time, as to the activities and intentions of our adversaries; as they are by no means gentlemen, neither can we afford to be so.
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Dave Israel
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I highly recommend the book: The American Black Chamber a 1931 publication by Herbert O. Yardley. The book describes the inner workings of the interwar American governmental cryptography organization called the Black Chamber. The cryptography historian David Kahn called the book "the most famous book on cryptology ever published."
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By describing the inter workings of the organization, the book created large public awareness of the United States' cryptographic abilities.
-
In particular, the Japanese government became aware of the extent of experience the American government had with cryptography and increased the strength of the their own knowledge in cryptography in response.
-
This is yet another example of the devastating result of unauthorized leaks of sensitive information, as the unauthorized book undoubtedly cost the United States significantly in blood and treasure in the Pacific theater against Japan in World War II
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The criticism about the NSA program(s) is incredibly misplaced, The outcome of War and Peace in the Terrorist age will depend critically upon our ability to collect and exploit information in real time, as to the activities and intentions of our adversaries; as they are by no means gentlemen, neither can we afford to be so.
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Dave Israel
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Thank you, Dave, for keeping us apprised of things like this unauthorized 1931 book and how damaging it was to America's spying capabilities. Despite the book (written well before the Japanese "Purple" cipher machine, I'm sure), and despite the Germans having tried to convince them otherwise, the Japanese failed to realize we were onto "Purple."
ReplyDelete(Changing venues now) I recently read in Melanie Phillips' book "The World Turned Upside Down" that Hitler talked about someday sending suicide-mission planes with no landing gear into the Manhattan skyscrapers and having the whole city go up in flames. So that idea certainly wasn't new with Osama Bin Laden.
Hi Lanny,
ReplyDeleteJune 19, 2013 at 10:13 PM,
The potential to employ commandeered aircraft as weapons was well understood by the Intel Community.
The difference as to how to deal with such issues, for example between the FSU and the US, during the cold war is critically highlighted by the KAL-007 shoot down.
The Soviets had a cast iron doctrine, "Thou shall not violate my airspace"
One of the most gut wrenching experiences I went through was listening to the conversation between the Soviet pilot and Generals at the highest levels of Soviet military command.
The young pilot, a major in the Soviet air force explained the nature of the civilian target, the conversation, in Russian and then the translation, by the Senior NSA Russian linguist, briefed out unemotionally in a high chamber of US executive government.
"The weapon is deployed" - "The target is Destroyed", I recall thinking that one could write a book about such and event; someone beat me to it, and I highly recommend the book, aptly named: "The Target is Destroyed"
Perhaps if we here in the USA had exercised a similar Cast Iron Policy regarding violation of our air space, The tragedy of 9/11 could have been greatly mitigated.
You be the judge, for surely it is arguable, to this day I cannot recall the experience of that briefing without a tear coming to my eyes.
Dave Israel
Can you elaborate, Dave? How do you think the 9/11 tragedy might have been mitigated if we had had the kind of ironclad policy the Former Soviet Union (FSU) had?
ReplyDeleteWe didn't know these were suicide missions until the second plane hit the second Trade Tower, did we? Was there a sufficient time interval between the crash into the second Tower and when the third plane hit the Pentagon for the US, if we had had the policy the FSU had, to shoot the plane down? Did anyone in our government know the third plane had been taken over while it was in flight?
We had to have had time to destroy the fourth plane, I'm sure, because those brave passengers were on cell phones with their families. I suppose they preempted any such potential action on the part of the US government as they gave their lives to prevent that plane from crashing into the Capitol or the White House.
It does bring tears to one's eyes to think of these things. I was very glad to read two syndicated New York Times columnists in the Palm Beach Post recently, David Brooks ("From the Right") and Thomas Friedman ("From the Left"), make the same point that we MUST NOT reduce our government's surveillance because of a few abuses. They say if we have a third tragedy, following on 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings, that the public will not stand for such a cutting back on surveillance.