The Puzzle Palace
The book the NSA tried to suppress -- with a startling new afterword on the Geoffrey Arthur Prime spy case. The National Security Agency is the largest, most secretive, and potentially most intrusive American intelligence agency. It dwarfs the CIA in budget, manpower, and influence. In the three decades it has existed, the NSA has demonstrated a shocking disregard for the law. Until now, the inner workings of this agency have eluded public scrutiny. In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, however, James Bamford penetrates the NSA's vast network of power -- the acres of computers, the electronic listening posts worldwide, the intelligence-gathering satellites, and the people who control them. The Puzzle Palace is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage and of the frightening Orwellian potential of today's intelligence communites. - Back cover.
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What Hacker News says
- Knowing that some classified program exists is one thing. Knowing technical details, capabilities, missions, targeting, is a whole nother. One can read about such black programs from a number of sources, Bamford's Puzzle Palace is one. Sontag's Blind Man's Bluff is another. You can also learn about such things from books and newspaper articles about people who revealed secret information to the Soviet Union, Chris Boyce, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and the Walker Family. In other words, nothing is truly secret if you know where to look and have a ability to piece together disparate facts to build up a more complete picture.
- If anyone's interested in the history of this stuff and why government agencies have these expectations, I suggesting checking out The Puzzle Palace from James Bamford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puzzle_Palace
https://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-O...
After reading that book and getting a better sense of the scope of intelligence operations over a wider swath of history, these types of requests come from make a whole lot more sense (whether you agree or not, you get a sense of the place they're coming from). Not making an argument in regard to what's right or wrong, but it does provide a tangible dose of reality. Also, given this was written in the 80's and much has come to be known since then, I still think this book holds its own in terms of clarity because it discusses historical topics without the messiness of the internet, social media, etc. Bamford has several more recent books, but I have not read those.
- Dark Territory, by Fred Kaplan. Same topic as this thread.
Also either Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets by James Bamford. Topic: NSA.
- NKW gave a nice summary of some recent actions. For more historical examples, I highly suggest any of James Bamford's excellent books on the NSA. _The Puzzle Palace_ is a massive tomb, but a very good read. I haven't had a chance to read _Shadow Factory_ yet, but it is in my pile.
- They're also charged with ComSec. If your main source of info on the NSA are the Snowden leaks, you're not getting the full picture.
If you're really interested in the subject of the NSA's history, and what it does, James Bamford's work is pretty interesting. Very dry books, tinged with his politics (more so Body of Secrets [1] than the Puzzle Palace [0]), but interesting none-the-less.
[0] The Puzzle Palace http://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-Or....
[1] Body of Secrets http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Sec....
Body of Secrets is an easier read, because it's written more around historical events. The Puzzle Palace got a little too in the weeds for my liking. One of its primary sources were a ton of unclassified internal memos, newsletters, etc, and he goes into things like who ran grounds security at the NSA's Fort Meade location.
- There are some good descriptions of telegraph-era government surveillance arrangements in Bamford's The Puzzle Palace (1983). Also Carlisle's Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (2015). And for fun, see Yardley's The American Black Chamber (1931).
Edit: And see http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/82-years... for more about Yardley.
Edit: Corrected publication date for The Puzzle Palace.
