NSA - National Security Agency
National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland - National Security Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Introduction
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The existence of the NSA was not revealed until 1975.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
The NSA creates and maintains all the encryption devices that the US Gov uses worldwide.
The inside joke within NSA was it used to mean “Never Say Anything”.
The NSA is in charge of creating and distributing One Time Pads (OTP), a manual encryption system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
NSA DIANA one time pad - US National Security Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
NSA WISTFULTOL is one of many projects that the NSA / TAO uses to electronically spy on computers.
NSA WISTFULTOL - U.S. National Security Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), TAO exploits
https://www.csoonline.com/article/2226073/nsa-exploits-targeting-windows.html
https://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-codenames.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations
NSA / CIA Partnerships
Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary book says this:
Division D is the CS unit that supports the National Security Agency in cracking the codes of foreign governments. When it is necessary to mount operations in the field against the communications of other countries, NSA turns to its sister intelligence services, such as the military services, all of which have sizable monitoring operations going against communist countries' military communications. Or NSA could turn to Division D which coordinates CIA collection support for NSA. Thus Division D provides expert knowledge for the planning of operations to recruit code clerks or to install technical devices to enable the decrypting of coded messages. Division D seems to be the most hushhush of the CS operating divisions, but, like 10 Division, its activities are always coordinated with the geographical area divisions and with station chiefs abroad.
Abuses
Edward Snowden
Snowden exposed that the NSA and CIA were operating outside their charter and violating the law.
Some people call him a traitor and some a whistleblower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
Summary
The NSA is a large Intel collection agency that is embedded in all of our army forces to protect us from our enemies. Many soldiers work for a branch of the military and the NSA simultaneously.
Its computer power is unmatched, with acres of server farms and the biggest collection of Super Computers in the world, for cracking codes and making codes.
Books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puzzle_Palace
The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford
Other Links
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)