National Security Agency example essay topic

Cryptography's Importance in Government Cryptography is one of the most influential and important assets pertaining to government today. Cryptography is the mathematical science of preparing communication incoherent to parties unintended to receive the message. A presidential directive at 12: 01, on November 4, 1952, established the National Security Agency (NSA) as a separate, secret organized agency within the Department of Defense (DoD) in this directive, President Truman appointed the Secretary of Defense as Executive Agent for the signal intelligence & communications security activities of the government. The Agency received additional duties, which was to provide information systems security (INFOSEC) for national security systems, in a 1984 presidential directive.

In addition, they also received an operation security training mission in a 1988 presidential directive. The INFOSEC mission provides leadership, products, and services to protect all national security systems against exploitation through interception, unauthorized access, or related technical intelligence threats (Pike, 1996). Cryptography has a substantial role in the United States' economy, military, and overall, secure communication. Cryptography is used in secure telephones (STU & STU IV) used by the White House, Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other governmental agencies vulnerable to eavesdropping by potentially hostile nations. The commercial sector of the United States also uses cryptography. Hundreds of messages over the Internet stay secure with the use of high security cryptographic software.

Companies like Amazon. com, E-bay, On-sale. com, and others must protect their customer's right to security when making a purchase over the Internet, which is extremely vulnerable to fraud (Beth, 1995). Cryptography, through various means, warrant that communication between command and control centers in the military remain authentic between forces. They do this by using a 'one-time pad'; it contains a set of numbers representing words and word phrases. After the given message is decoded, the sheet with the codes and phrases used is destroyed, and the codes used only once, hence the name 'one-time pad'; .

Several other regions cryptography is used is in secure communication. NATO forces share secure radios, so the enemy has little no chance of determining the whereabouts of the force, anticipated extraction points, points of entry, and the like. Cryptography has ensured national security in the past. The Verona project, undertaken by the Army Signal Intelligence Service in 1943, was fabricated to break, decipher, and read coded messages from the Soviet Union, all in complete secrecy (Radosh, 1995). They were to provide proof of the involvement of the Rosenberg in a major espionage operation from World War II. From 1947-1952, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were leaders of a spy ring intended to steal plans from the United States atomic arsenal, through the Manhattan project.

The KGB received messages from the New York Consulate, and sent encrypted messages there. Most of the messages intercepted contained gaps, incoherence, the authenticity was questionable, there were no sketches, diagrams, or any other proof of the device in question. Despite these discrepancies, the FBI apprehended Rosenberg on behalf of the United States Government, and charged Julius Rosenberg with trying to extract documents related to the United States nuclear arsenal. Later probes showed that Ethel Rosenberg typed Julius's py reports, had a KGB code word, and had mention in only two KGB documents Further investigation revealed that the messages passed through a series of contacts, and chemists existed to decipher data.

Furthermore, a parallel spy ring was another creation of Julius Rosenberg. He had recruited communists; moreover, they had confirmed KGB infiltration in North America. Several spies worked on an APR-13 radar unit, long range radar systems, and the P-47 aircraft, produced by the Republic Aircraft Company. They also reported on construction and some designs exposed themselves in MIG-fighters in the Soviet Union (Radosh, 1995). Without cryptography, knowledge of the existence of the Rosenberg spy ring would have been almost nonexistent. The extent of the damage they could have caused the United States is inscrutable.

Another instance where cryptography showed itself as an asset to the government was in Pearl Harbor (Bamford, 1982). As tensions grew in the Pacific, circa 1941, the War Department decided to concentrate all cryptographic efforts on Japanese intercepts. During the first Sunday of December, a listening station intercepted several messages from Tokyo to Washington D.C. The intercepts passed through an unwieldy maze of personnel, then, a lieutenant deciphered the message. He used a machine to break the message, and found out it signaled the break of peace talks with the United States. The message was transported to higher authority, and the significance of the message was shown.

The breaking of peace talks are the penultimate act of war. A frantic search was made to inform an Army Chief of staff of the preempting strike in Hawaii. Through extreme miscommunication, an intercept that proved to be important had suddenly become yesterday's news. Although the message never arrived at Pearl Harbor in time to fend off the attack, it proved that cryptography could be used in the future to prevent a repeat action of the Pearl Harbor Attack (Bamford, 1982).

The National Security Agency is now an extremely large government agency. They are involved in cracking codes between nations and testing the security of communication between government agencies. To ensure national security, they take part in intelligence gathering operations, that are funded by the government in their budget (See Graph, Pg. 7.) Covert and clandestine operations in hostile nations sometimes report encrypted data to the National Security Agency for further analysis. These covert operations have given the National Security Agency a nickname amongst the nation, 'No Such Agency'; , as Washington dubbed them. In conclusion, cryptography has ensured the security of the United States in the past by decommissioning a KGB spy ring, entrenched deep in North America. It showed importance (the ability to decipher a pre-empting attack on the United States) in the Pearl Harbor attack, in 1941.

Cryptography will prove to be important in the present and future by ensuring that credit card numbers stay secure over the internet, fraud does not occur (over the internet), military actions are not compromised through shoddy radio security, and information exchanged among the White House, Pentagon, and other governmental agencies are not compromised by hostile nations.