[Revised 6/20/2013]
The National Security Agency (formerly known as Never Say Anything or No Such Agency) came into being from a variety of other preexisting organizations doing similar work in the Department of Defense. They were combined and given new resources because of at least four events (and possibly more) that made it abundantly clear to the Truman administration that this was important work. Three of these happened before the NSA was created, and the fourth was in progress when the NSA was founded.
The National Security Agency (formerly known as Never Say Anything or No Such Agency) came into being from a variety of other preexisting organizations doing similar work in the Department of Defense. They were combined and given new resources because of at least four events (and possibly more) that made it abundantly clear to the Truman administration that this was important work. Three of these happened before the NSA was created, and the fourth was in progress when the NSA was founded.
The four events/activities are (in
chronological order) Zimmerman, Enigma, Midway and Venona. These
four events all changed history and all of them involved intercepting
and reading internal communications from one part of a foreign
government to another part of that same government by way of electronic media, in this case cable/telegraph and radio.
1. Zimmerman
During World War 1, while the USA was
still neutral, a variety of events occurred such that all
translatlantic cables between Europe and the Americas ended up going
through a single cable. Without telling anyone, the British
listened in on that cable and made copies of everything. The German
Foreign Secretary sent an encrypted message to his ambassador in
Mexico City with the following instructions. Germany was about to
begin unrestricted submarine warfare against the British in the
Atlantic. They, the Germans, were concerned that this might cause
the USA to enter the war on the side of Great Britain. Were that to
happen, the Ambassador was instructed to open negotiations with
Mexico to see if they would open a front against America, which
Germany would support financially and materially. The British
decrypted the telegram and found a way to give a copy to the
Americans such that it would not compromise how the British got ahold
of it, and also answer any questions about whether the telegram was
authentic. In other words, prove that the British had not forged it
as part of a scheme to get American into the war on their side. The
Americans made the telegram public and it was a significant factor in
the USA coming into World War 1 on the side of Britain and France.
In other words, the British were spying
on all communications sent by cable (e.g. telegram) between Europe
and N. America and decrypted and cherry picked one of those
communications to change the course of the war.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
2. Enigma
In World War 2, short messages between
various parts of the German command were sent encrypted using a very
famous device called Enigma. Longer messages were sent another
way. The British (and later the Americans) attempted to intercept
as many Enigma encoded messages as they could. These messages were
sent by radio. The British, with Polish help, were able to break
Enigma and read a certain number of these messages on a daily basis
within a few hours of their changing the code (which the Germans did
daily). This information, a closely guarded secret, allowed the
allies to read internal German communications for a large part of the
war. Enigma was unbelievably useful.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
3. Midway
This is one of the many great stories
of World War Two and it is amazing the number of people who do not
know it. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy planned an operation
to complete the destruction of the American fleet. The United
States had a variety of radio intercept stations where they tried to
intercept messages from various parts of the Japanese Fleet to/from
Tokyo. There were several different codes in use at different
levels of security. Station Hypo in Hawaii was able to decrypt
enough information to know about the Japanese plan to attack Port
Moresby which led to the Battle of Coral Sea. The Doolittle Raid
of Tokyo took place which caused the final approval of the Japanese
attack on Midway. Station Hypo was able to decrypt enough of the
plan, the order of battle, etc, to cause Nimitz to plan an ambush,
possibly the single greatest ambush in naval history. Most
historians of that war believe that this was the turning point of the
war in the Pacific.
See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Magic/COMINT-Midway.html
See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Magic/COMINT-Midway.html
4. Venona
Trying to condense Venona down to a
single paragraph is nearly impossible. During World War Two, the
Russians had many offices in our country to help coordinate the
various activities that we were doing together, such as Lend Lease.
These offices sent thousands of messages to / from Moscow as part of
their trade activities in encrypted form. We collected 10% or so of
those messages and did nothing with them. They began trying to decode/decypher these messsages during the war, but most progress was made after the war was over. A stack of these encrypted messages was given to a
three person group to see what they could get from them. They
weren't looking for anything in particular, and they did not
particularly think that the Russians were doing anything bad. It
was more of an exercise, I think, than anything else. The details
of this are fascinating but besides the point, it turns out that the
Russians had a mistake in one of their five encryption systems and
that we could read parts of a few hundred of these messages. And
what we discovered is that the Russians had been conducting massive
espionage against the United States the entire time, and that they
not only knew about the Manhattan project, but had completely
penetrated it from nearly the beginning and that the FBI and other
counterintelligence groups had been completely unaware.
The best discussion / introduction to Venona that I have found is the following preface on the CIA website. It is odd that it is on the CIA website but that is a nuance to be discussed only if you believe other parts of my post.
See https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/preface.htm
The best discussion / introduction to Venona that I have found is the following preface on the CIA website. It is odd that it is on the CIA website but that is a nuance to be discussed only if you believe other parts of my post.
See https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/preface.htm
Why this matters.
History has proven that intercepting
the enemy's internal communications as sent over cable or radio and reading it can change the
course of a war. At the same time, it proves that protecting your
communications from the other side doing the same thing to you is
critical.
What does this have to do with reading
your email? The answer is, they are not reading your email. They
are looking for communications signals between members of foreign
governments and non-government organizations (e.g. terrorist groups)
and technology has changed such that they have to collect a great big
bag of shit and then sift through it.
They could not care less about your
pornography, your cheating on your taxes, or your infidelity.
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