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Big Brother NSA and Its "Little Brothers": The National Security Agency's Global Surveillance Network
Cook, Terry L. 1998. 421 pages.
Categories: Politics and Organizations |
If there is anything worse than a conspiracy book (I hate conspiracy books), it's a Christian
apocalyptic conspiracy book. Here's the opening line "Big Brother is planning to enslave
you! How? Electronically, via the National Security Agency!". The next pages claims that
the "666 Beast Computer System" is "situated on the Ft. Meade Army Base." I give the book some
credit for its nice aerial shots, but on the whole, you'd be much better off reading the
Puzzle Palace.
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This is the long awaited sequel (of sorts) to Bamford's first book on the NSA, "The
Puzzle Palace" (1983). The book is divided into two parts, first covering the history
of SIGINT (mostly in times of war) and the second covering the agency today. The
first part gives good treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis and touches on pre-80's
sources and methods. The second part is sometimes boring, as he exhaustively details
the NSA's dealings with reverse discrimination, layoffs, chronology of directors, and
other mundane administrative trivia.
The book sites many FOIA-obtained documents which the author uses to make some very
serious accusations. One of which is "Operation Northwoods", in which the author
claims that during the 60's, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in proposing various
scenarios in which innocent Americans would be killed by the US government within US
borders in order to lay the blame on Castro and rally the American public to back an
invasion into Cuba.
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Electronic Privacy Papers, The: Documents on the Battle for Privacy in the Age of Surveillance
Schneier, Bruce / Banisar, David. 1997. 747 pages.
Categories: Politics and Organizations, Reference |
The authors explain the politics and history of modern encryption in the US by amassing a huge paper trail
of government and legal documents. Much of the controversy is already out of date (ie the clipper chip),
but it's still a nice reference. It's always fun browsing sanitized (black marker, then photo copied)
documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act.
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Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption
Whitfield, Diffie / Landau, Susan Eva. 1998. 360 pages.
Categories: Politics and Organizations |
This is one of the few books I've read where the footnotes in the back proved
more interested than the main text. "Privacy on the Line" is unnecessarily
academic at times, but it is a reasonable choice if you want a politically-oriented
history of communications, interception, and encryption. (I was fortunate
enough to get both authors to autograph this book for me.)
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The Puzzle Palace is a fascinating inside look at the National Security Agency.
Covers such topics as the NSA measuring their computer floor space in acres,
their somewhat "invasive" hiring practices, and the history of the DES. Due
to when it was written, it only covers the history of the NSA up to 1982. However,
don't let that stop you from picking up this national bestseller.
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Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network
Hager, Nicky. 1996 (Currently out of print). 299 pages.
Categories: Politics and Organizations |
This captivating book is a nice piece of investigative reporting (with a dash of speculation) on the
NSA, the GCSB, and their relationship with other members of his so called "You-Koo-Za" intelligence gathering
club. It doesn't seem to be available in America (Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and
Borders don't have it on record), and it was available on www.amazon.co.uk, but they removed
all mention of it a few years back. Good luck finding it. (ISBN 0908802358)
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