🚀 go-pugleaf

tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes:
>If you haven't yet read James Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace," run out
>and get a copy and read it.

	I have. Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to assume that everything
Bamford writes is accurate, even if it is printed on paper and nicely
bound. 

>Understand that there are virtually no laws governing the NSA's
>surveillance of fax machines, modems, the Internet (including all of
>these postings, obviously), voice phones, telex and TWX, and on and
>on. Because of the "national security" role, wide lattitude is given. 

	Do you have hard evidence of this? That'd be really nice to
see.

	NSA has "wide latitude" for international intercepts, but
is not supposed to be concerned with domestic intercepts. I suspect
that most of NSA's monitoring of USENET is done with 'rn' or 'trn'.

>[...] be very afraid

	I'd rather try to be informed, keep from panicing, and above
all making statements that I can't document (other than by pointing
at a book, which also can't document its more interesting facts), in
a public forum.

	It seems that USENET goes through periodic cycles of people
posting long "factual" rants about the terrible stuff NSA does. It's
all based on "friend of a friend" or "something from a book" which
in turn is based on "friend of a friend." It's boring and probably
belongs in alt.conspiracy, not sci.crypt.

mjr.
-- 
	You can't fix stupidity with software.
	You can't fix stupidity with laws, either.
						-notebooks of a heretic