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Category Archives: NSA

Young sheep farmers to be given genetic boost by new NSA giveaway – The Scottish Farmer

Posted: May 18, 2023 at 1:53 am

As with previous giveaways, this gives young sheep enthusiasts aged 18 to 35 the opportunity to win one of five MV accredited, performance recorded Romney rams, kindly provided by Rob and Jo Hodgkins, of Kaiapoi Romneys, through the Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust. But new for 2023, NSA is also teaming up with the Dutch Spotted Sheep Society to giveaway five ram vouchers, each to the value of 750, to be redeemed at an official Dutch Spotted Sheep Society sale in 2023.

NSA communications manager, Katie James, who is co-ordinating the giveaway, said: The addition of the Dutch Spotted ram vouchers to the giveaway will mean even more young shepherds will be able to benefit from this initiative. The two breeds will offer sheep farmers from contrasting systems the opportunity to benefit from top class genetics that will help them progress their systems.

Edward Adamson, for the Dutch Spotted Sheep Society, added: As a relatively new breed in the UK the Dutch Spotted Sheep Society understands the difficulties of getting started and is pleased to take this opportunity to help some enthusiastic young sheep farmers establish their businesses and realise the qualities of the Dutch Spotted breed.

READ MORE:National Sheep Association slam Lynx reintroduction plans

The giveaway is just one element of the programme that encourages and supports the sheep farmers and service providers of the future. The programme is inviting applications from enthusiastic young sheep farmers in the UK who would like to be considered as a recipient of a Kaiapoi Romney ram or a Dutch Spotted ram voucher to apply and be considered by submitting a short video clip explaining the reasons for their application and an overview of why they believe they should be considered as a chosen recipient.

Applications opened on Monday, May 15 and will remain open until Monday, June 19. All applicants will be notified of whether they have made it to the next stage of the application process. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an online selection interview during the week beginning Monday, July 17, 2023 via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and the successful applicants informed within 48 hours.

For full entry guidance and terms and conditions of the giveaway visit https://go.nationalsheep.org.uk/GENE-eration.

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Sydney Sweeney wanted to be challenged by Reality: Its a different muscle playing someone who is real [Exclusive Video Interview] – Yahoo…

Posted: at 1:53 am

Few actresses under 30 could claim as much success as Sydney Sweeney over the last two years. Her breakout performance on HBOs Euphoria scored Sweeney a well-deserved Emmy Award nomination for Best Drama Supporting Actress in 2022 one of two nominations the 25-year-old landed last year (the other being Best Movie/Limited Supporting Actress for The White Lotus). That creative recognition has led her to numerous high-profile projects, including a key part in the Spider-man spinoff Madame Web opposite Dakota Johnson and a lead role with Glen Powell in the Sony romantic comedy Anyone But You.

But the prolific Sweeney who also maintains numerous brand partnerships and a heavy social media presence as well had never come across a project like Reality before. The new HBO film, co-written and directed by Tina Satter and based on her own play, is about the arrest of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner and unfolds in real-time, taking its dialogue and structure directly from the FBIs arrest transcript.

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SEEReality trailer: Sydney Sweeney stars as Reality Winner in new Max movie [Watch]

I am always searching for characters that I havent done before or challenged me in new ways than previous ones have, Sweeney tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. So when Reality came across my table, I was very much drawn to it because of the challenge. And just the script itself. It was just a completely different thing than Ive ever seen before.

Reality opens with Winner being confronted outside her suburban home by two FBI agents (played by Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis) and eventually moves to a back room in Winners house for the lengthy interrogation scene, which Sweeney estimates comprised almost 60 pages of the economical script. (Reality clocks in at under 90 minutes in total running time.)

Story continues

Once we got into that room, we were there and it was basically one scene, Sweeney explains. Tina did such an amazing job of flawlessly finding places to be able to cut because we couldnt film all of that in one day we filmed the whole movie in 16 days. And so we had 10 to 15 pages per day to film, and you kind of just start to feel the weight and the gravity of the situation as the walls slowly come closer and closer in as youre filming, because we filmed most of it in order.

When playing a fictional person like Cassie Howard on Euphoria, Sweeney spends months writing lengthy character bibles filled with details that help her understand the person shes tasked to create onscreen. But for Reality, Sweeney adopted a hybrid approach that combined her own creative imagination with actual conversations she had with Winner over Zoom and text message.

I wanted to find a mixture of the two [research methods] because I wanted to, of course, learn as much as I possibly could about Reality, she says. I knew the box within what her life was and her memories, and I wanted as much as I could learn from her. Then I took all of that knowledge, and I put it into my books, and I just expanded it from there so that I had it was more fleshed out.

Winner was arrested on June 3, 2017, and was sentenced in 2018 to five years and three months in jail for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. She received the longest sentence ever for releasing classified documents to the media but was released from prison in 2021 on account of good behavior. Sweeney says what surprised her about Winner was the former NSA translators sense of humor.

She has quite an interesting sense of humor about herself, Sweeney says. So once I learned that, and I got to know her, and I reread the transcript in the script, I saw so much of that in there that I didnt see before.

Sweeney says Winner supports Reality and her family attended the films premiere at the Berlin Film Festival this year, where Satters feature premiere to rave reviews for its star.

Its a different muscle playing someone who is real, Sweeney says of what shell take from the film. I definitely loved that. And I think that Id really enjoy finding another character thats based off of a real person and diving into the research on that person.

Reality premieres May 29 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and will stream on Max.

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Sydney Sweeney wanted to be challenged by Reality: Its a different muscle playing someone who is real [Exclusive Video Interview] - Yahoo...

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Intercepted: The Biggest Whodunnit of the Century – The Intercept

Posted: at 1:52 am

On September 26, 2022, at approximately 2:03 a.m. local time in the Baltic Sea off the southeast coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline was rocked by a blast. That explosion, followed by a series of other targeted detonations on the older Nord Stream 1 pipelines some 17 hours later, were swiftly assessed to be the result of deliberate sabotage. The explosions off the Swedish and Danish coasts set off an international mystery with unimaginably high stakes. There are a variety of international players, including powerful nation states, who would have had the motive, capability, and opportunity to conduct such an operation.

This week on Intercepted, investigative journalist and author James Bamford takes us on a tour of what he calls the biggest Whodunnit of the century. Bamford is one of the most respected experts on U.S. intelligence operations and covert action. He is the author of several best-selling books, including The Puzzle Palace: A Report on Americas Most Secret Agency and The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. His most recent book is Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of Americas Counterintelligence.

Last week, The Nation published a story by Bamford in which he argues that Ukraine and Poland should be viewed as the top suspects in the sabotage and that the U.S. government almost certainly knows exactly who bombed the pipelines and how. That story is titled The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity.

Transcript coming soon.

Correction: May 17, 2023, 12:36 p.m. ETA previous version of this episode incorrectly numbered the initial blast on the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline at 2:03 a.m. The show description and audio have been updated.

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Personal injury + the No Surprises Act – Chiropractic Economics

Posted: at 1:52 am

Are you taking advantage of the greatest marketing opportunity that has been available to chiropractors in its 127 years of practice? It is called the No Surprises Act (NSA), and here is something that might surprise you: This regulatory act is, in fact, a huge chance to turn personal injury patients into long-term wellness care patients.

Thats right: Injury care can work as a feeder to wellness care. If you approach this correctly, you have a huge profit advantage before you. Patients entering your practice through injury care, and especially through personal injury (PI), are more likely to enter into, commit, and see through longer-term wellness care plans. You profit more, and your business is worth more as a result.

Lets start by considering the problem with the business of chiropractic.

Most people who seek chiropractic care do so when they have back or neck pain. They come in for an adjustment here and there. And many others still consider chiropractic care to be quackery.

But we all know chiropractic care has much more to offer, addressing adrenal fatigue, headaches, gut problems, stress, insomnia and other maladies. Chiropractic is science-based, noninvasive injury and preventive wellness care, helping relieve (if not remove) pain, leading to a healthier life.

And yet, rare is the person who includes chiropractic care as part of a long-term wellness plan. They go to the gym, get massages and pluck their eyebrows on a routine basis, but chiropractic care is sought out on an as-needed basis, if at all.

Whether they realize it or not, most chiropractors fuel that perception by seeing patients on a per visit model. Under this model, you, the chiropractor, see the patient today, and then determine if you will see them again. You repeat the cycle at each visit.

The problem, then, is that a chiropractor must hustle continuously to fill those daily and weekly patient slots. Instead of having a steady stream of wellness patients already committed to a visit regimen, the business chases one-off patients, hoping they come back. And this lowers the business valuation because it has no roster of long-term care patients who have already committed to care over months, if not years.

Much like personal-injury patients who are traditionally slotted in advance for 15-30 visits, so, too, are term wellness care patients. If you can find more of these patients, your upcoming patient visit slots will already be filling up, which is great for you now, and also when you want to sell your practice.

The foundation for success, then, is transitioning your chiropractic office to one that has a healthy stream of patients who see you for a term of care, not just one or a few visits. These patients have committed to a treatment plan over time, in advance, which is a far more profitable and value-driven business model.

Having a loyal, pre-committed client base as a business asset increases the value of your business, which is important when it comes time to exit your business and sell it. Rather than simply being valued for the treatment beds and medical equipment owned by your business, plus gross annual revenues, your business valuation increases when you have patients committed to treatment over time.

That increase can be quite substantial. After all, you have a proven business that is not reliant upon that days walk-ins. Indeed, walks-ins should end up being 20% of your daily patient flow, if that.

This is a doable goal over time, and both the synergy between injury care and wellness care, along with the effects of the No Surprises Act, can rocket your practice to another level.

To be sure, great business owners start with the end in mind. They think like chess players, considering how they will establish a profitable business they can sell for the highest amount possible, and they know the moves it takes to get there.

Whether you realize it or not, every PI patient starts off as a term-care-plan patient. The secret is turning those term PI patients into term-wellness-care-plan patients. In fact, any practice focusing only on injury care is missing the synergy and gold of wellness care.

Injury care and wellness care go hand-in-hand. Those injured at some point heal, but need further care for maintenance and prevention of further injury. Those undergoing wellness care, like it or not, get into PI or other injury care situations. Each exists alongside the other, in a wonderful symbiotic dance.

When you combine injury care and the No Surprises Act, you can get a true business advantage that can fuel your term-care-plan wellness patients to the advantage of both your patients, your practice and your pockets.

In January of 2022, Congress passed the No Surprises Act (NSA) to curtail surprise billings. The meat of the NSA is something called a good faith estimate, or a GFE. Essentially, the NSA wants patients to be given a GFE before treatment begins so their medical bill does not surprise them, and so they have an opportunity to shop for alternative treaters, should they believe the GFE is too high.

Heres how it fits into personal injury and chiropractic care. The No Surprises Act mandates term-care plan estimates. When any uninsured or self-pay patient personal injury, cash or otherwise schedules a visit for treatment, you should (and generally must) provide a GFE that covers your anticipated medical care up to a full years worth. And that GFE must be provided in advance of care depending upon when the appointment was scheduled.

The NSA is intended to apply to all uninsured and all self-pay patients, which includes your PI patients, even if they have insurance and even if they have medical expense or personal injury protection (MedPay or PIP) as part of their auto policy coverage. Self-pay essentially means the patient may have to pull money out of their own pocket. Given there is no guarantee a PI patient will win a claim or lawsuit, or that MedPay or PIP will for sure cover your bill, the NSA likely will be deemed to apply to your PI patients.

And guess what a GFE is? Essentially, it is a long-term-care plan just a very detailed one, having all the what, when and how much fully laid out so there are no surprises.

Before the NSA was passed, at best, you likely provided a fee schedule to your patient. Now, you are required to detail all diagnosis codes, treatment codes, frequency of treatment and cost. You are also required to include any co-providers or co-facilities, such as imaging, into your GFE if you are the primary provider and in PI cases, the chiropractor usually is.

That GFE needs to be provided in advance of care or by the second visit, depending upon when the first appointment was scheduled. And this is to your advantage.

Consider, for instance, how you are training your patients. Estimates can change, which means you will likely issue updated GFEs throughout treatment for the patients to sign off on. This puts you and your patients in the habit of thinking long-term.

Even better, the attorney, upon seeing the price tag of your GFE, will shout, Yes! Do that!

The patient benefits, too, through exposure to chiropractic care the No. 1 specialty in PI cases in most regions. All too often, though, it is also the first time that patient has ever been to a chiropractor. Even if they think chiropractic care is a bit unorthodox, they get treated, given that the value of their PI case increases as their medical bills increase.

And PI patients show up as scheduled and comply with a longer treatment plan because of that potential financial gain. If they fail to comply with your treatment plan, their PI recovery can be negatively impacted. This is why PI patients generally have a higher percentage of positive health outcomes, which makes sense. If the patient shows up as the doctor advises, he or she gets healthier, faster.

As a result, your patient also is going to walk away from chiropractic care with the positive impression that your treatment made them healthier perhaps even significantly better. That creates loyal patients who are going to be more likely to move from injury care to maintenance care by becoming wellness patients.

Now, when you present a term care plan to a post-PI patient, that patient is far more likely to both agree and comply. What a wonderful thing for both the patients physical health and your businesss financial health.

Now, more patient visits are filled in advance, you have more contracted term patients, and as a result, life is easier and your business is worth more.

Long story short: Dont be afraid of PI or the No Surprises Act. Embrace both. Use the symbiotic relationship between injury and wellness care to the advantage of your patients, your practice and your profits.

MICHAEL COATES, ESQ, is a national authority on personal injury medical lien recovery and the founder of PIMadeEasy.com, which educates, coaches and trains medical providers and their staff to accelerate their success in personal injury. For more information, go to Facebook.com/groups/pimadeeasy.

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PM Narendra Modi e-inaugurating new office complexes of CBI at Shilong, Pune and Nagpur, commemorating the CBI diamond jubilee on Monday. Also seen…

Posted: April 4, 2023 at 7:30 am

PM Narendra Modi e-inaugurating new office complexes of CBI at Shilong, Pune and Nagpur, commemorating the CBI diamond jubilee on Monday. Also seen are Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh and NSA Ajit Doval.  Daily Excelsior

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PM Narendra Modi e-inaugurating new office complexes of CBI at Shilong, Pune and Nagpur, commemorating the CBI diamond jubilee on Monday. Also seen...

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Special Collection Service – Wikipedia

Posted: March 31, 2023 at 1:37 am

Classified joint CIANSA program to insert eavesdropping equipment in difficult places

The Special Collection Service (SCS), codenamed F6,[1] is a highly classified joint U.S. Central Intelligence AgencyNational Security Agency program charged with inserting eavesdropping equipment in difficult-to-reach places, such as foreign embassies, communications centers, and foreign government installations. Established in the late 1970s and headquartered in Beltsville, Maryland,[2] the SCS has been involved in operations ranging from the Cold War to the Global War on Terrorism.

The SCS is a U.S. black budget program[3] that has been described as the United States' "Mission Impossible force," responsible for "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering."[4][5][6][7] It is headquartered in Beltsville, Maryland, in an obscured building that was at one time labeled simply "CSSG." Next door is the U.S. Department of State's Beltsville Messaging Center, to which the SCS is linked via fiber optic cable. The SCS is jointly staffed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).[7][8][9] According to intelligence historian James Bamford, "The position of SCS chief alternates between NSA and CIA officials."[10] SCS operatives are based out of U.S. embassies and consulates overseas, and operatives often use Foreign Service or Diplomatic Telecommunications Service cover when deployed.[7][11][12] Their mission is to intercept sensitive information on espionage, nuclear arms, terrorist networks, drug trafficking and other national-security-related issues.[4]

The SCS was established to overcome a problem in that the NSA typically intercepts communications "passively" from its various intercept facilities throughout the world, yet the increasing sophistication of foreign communications equipment renders passive interception futile and instead requires direct access to the communications equipment. The CIA, meanwhile, has access to agents specializing in clandestine operations and thus is more able to gain access to foreign communication equipment, yet lacks the NSA's expertise in communications eavesdropping. Hence, the SCS was born, combining the communications intelligence capabilities of the NSA with the covert action capabilities of the CIA in order to facilitate access to sophisticated foreign communications systems.[4][13][14]

The SCS employs exotic covert listening device technologies to bug foreign embassies, communications centers, computer facilities, fiber-optic networks, and government installations.[4][5] The U.S. government has never officially acknowledged its existence, and little is known about the technologies and techniques it employs.[4] The sole inside account of SCS comes from a Canadian, Mike Frost, whose 1994 book Spyworld revealed that the program was known to insiders at the time as "College Park".[15] As of 2008, the SCS is reported to target for recruitment key foreign communications personnel such as database managers, systems administrators, and information technology specialists.[10]

During October 2013, reports by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden led to the unveiling of the SCS having systematically wiretapped Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel's private cell phone over a period of over 10 years, which among other activities to wiretap and systematically record large amounts of European and South American leaders' and citizens' communication by the NSA led to a distinct diplomatic backlash at the United States government.[16]

The SCS program was established in 1978 during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.[1][4][15]

As encryption technology increased in sophistication, by the end of the 20th century many coded signals proved unbreakable. Due to this problem, bugging techniques and technologies saw a revival: unable to easily intercept and decrypt foreign communications through passive means, the U.S. government needed to instead intercept the communications at their source, and thus the SCS program was expanded in the 1990s to fulfill this need.[17][18][19]

According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the SCS is part of a larger global surveillance program known as STATEROOM.[20]

SCS operatives reportedly hid eavesdropping devices in pigeons perched on the windowsills of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.[7]

The SCS program was compromised by infamous Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mole Robert Hanssen in the 1990s, which provided Moscow with sensitive information about highly sophisticated U.S. overseas bugging operations.[5][21] However, the program was so secret that, after Hanssen's arrest, the FBI would only describe it in general terms, as a "program of enormous value, expense, and importance to the U.S. government".[4][6]

In 1999, as the Clinton Administration sought to kill Osama bin Laden following the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, SCS operatives covertly entered Afghanistan to place eavesdropping devices within range of Al-Qaeda's tactical radios.[22]

The SCS was rumored to have been involved in the 2001 operation that planted 27 satellite-controlled bugs in the Boeing 767-300ER that was to be used as Chinese leader Jiang Zemin's official jet. The bugs were discovered, however, before they could be switched on.[23]

Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, SCS was described as the "prime mover" of electronic surveillance in the country.[24] SCS operatives built numerous antennae, spaced throughout the Iraqi countryside, capable of intercepting Iraqi microwave communications. These Iraqi communications would have been otherwise difficult to intercept, because they beamed hilltop to hilltop in a narrow band, with an angle too oblique and thus too dissipated to be intercepted by air or spacecraft.[25]

In 1998, the U.S. government recruited an Australian operative under SCS and deployed him to Iraq. The operative reported concerns about what was transpiring in Iraq, in that there was "a very high volume of data, and that he was getting no feedback about whether it was good, bad, or useful". He further reported that "this was a massive intelligence collection operation one that was not in accordance with what UNSCOM was supposed to be doing" at the time.[24]

After the invasion, SCS operatives were employed in the hunt for Saddam Hussein, planting sophisticated eavesdropping equipment in target areas to intercept communications that were then analyzed by voice analysis experts.[26]

The SCS was heavily involved in eavesdropping to advance the Global War on Terrorism, setting up eavesdropping posts around Middle Eastern capitals and figures close to Osama bin Laden's terrorism network.[7][27] In 1999, an SCS team monitored al-Qaeda training camps near Khost.[1]

When the United States located Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, SCS operatives established a base in an apartment that the CIA had rented a mile away from the compound. They focused lasers on the compound windows and, by analyzing the vibrations, were able to count the number of people inside and outside, and also ascertained that there was one person who never ventured outside the compound. Bin Laden was killed inside the compound during a raid by U.S. special operations forces on May 2, 2011.[28][29]

Coordinates: 390242N 765125W / 39.045N 76.857W / 39.045; -76.857

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What is the NSA and how does it work? – SearchSecurity

Posted: February 5, 2023 at 10:18 am

What is the National Security Agency (NSA)?

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a federal government intelligence agency that is part of the United States Department of Defense and is managed under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).

The intelligence agency, led by the director of the NSA, does its global monitoring, collection and processing of information and data electronically from its headquarters in Maryland. The NSA is in the Intelligence-gathering business and -- unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) -- its agents don't make arrests. Instead, the NSA turns information over to the military.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman officially formed the NSA to perform a specialized discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT is intelligence gathering by interception of signals -- either communications between people or through electronic signals not directly used in communication.

Two decades later, in 1972, a presidential directive established the Central Security Service (CSS) to provide cryptologic support, knowledge and assistance to the military cryptologic community. The NSA and CSS together form the National Security Agency Central Security Service (NSA/CSS). The job of the NSA/CSS is to create a more unified cryptologic effort with the armed forces and team with senior military and civilian leaders to address and act on critical military-related issues in support of national and tactical intelligence objectives, according to the government.

The NSA exists to protect national communications systems integrity and to collect and process information about foreign adversaries' secret communications in support of national security and foreign policy.

Its role in preserving national security is twofold:

In October 2017, Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed new guidelines enabling the NSA to provide intercepted communications and raw SIGINT -- before applying domestic and foreign privacy protections -- to 16 government agencies, including the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency.

Although the organization's number of employees -- as well as its budget -- falls into the category of classified information, the NSA lists among its workforce analysts, engineers, physicists, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts, managers, and administrative and clerical assistants.

It also claims to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the U.S. and possibly worldwide. NSA/CSS mathematicians perform the agency's two critical functions: They design cryptographic systems to protect U.S. communications, and they search for weaknesses in the counterpart systems of U.S. adversaries.

The NSA denies reports claiming that it has an unlimited black budget -- undisclosed even to other government agencies. Nevertheless, the agency admitted that, if it were judged as a corporation, it would rank in the top 10% of Fortune 500 companies.

It's been known that the NSA listens in on every international phone call made to and from the U.S., but that's just one aspect of the agency's work. Another aspect is the agency's focus on intelligence gathering.

It was believed that the NSA only focused on international intelligence gathering. However, that belief was derailed in 2013 when details about some of the NSA's other surveillance programs became public.

That's when former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden leaked troves of confidential NSA information to the national and international press. The documents indicated the agency had broadened its domestic surveillance activities to bulk collection of U.S. communications.

Snowden told the press about 10 NSA surveillance programs:

Early interception techniques relied on radio signals, radar and telemetry.

The first traces of SIGINT date back to July 1917 when the government created the Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence. This was three months after the United States had declared war on Germany, in part because of the infamous Zimmerman Telegram.

Intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, the Zimmerman Telegram revealed that the German foreign secretary attempted to entice Mexico into war against the U.S. by promising to return the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico should Germany win the war.

When British codebreakers intercepted this message, it inflamed the U.S. and proved the value of SIGINT.

After the war, SIGINT work became fragmented and scattered among numerous agencies and government entities. The Army Signal Corps developed the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in May 1929 after taking over cryptology from military intelligence. Civilian William F. Friedman became chief cryptologist at SIS and was tasked with educating a small team of civilians on cryptanalysis so they could compile codes for the U.S. Army.

After the armed forces succeeded in cracking German and Japanese codes during World War II, President Truman reorganized American SIGINT under the NSA. SIS, renamed the Signal Security Agency and then the Army Security Agency in the mid-1940s, became part of the National Security Agency.

In 1957, the NSA moved to Fort Meade in Maryland, where it is still based today.

In 2012, The New York Times reported that Stuxnet malware, discovered in June 2010 after a damaging attack on Windows machines and programmatic logic controllers in Iran's industrial plants, including its nuclear program, had been jointly developed by the U.S. and Israel. Neither country has admitted responsibility for the malicious computer worm.

A hacker organization dubbed Equation Group allegedly used two of the zero-day exploits prior to the Stuxnet attack, according to antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, which is based in Moscow and made the claims in 2015.

In addition to protecting national security through cryptography and cryptanalysis, the NSA has weathered security breaches beyond Snowden that have caused embarrassment for the agency and affected its intelligence-gathering capabilities.

An unidentified NSA contractor removed classified U.S. government information from the NSA in 2015 and stored the material, which included code and spyware used to infiltrate foreign networks, on a personal device. The files were allegedly intercepted by Russian hackers. The contractor acknowledged using antivirus software from Kaspersky Lab.

In 2017, Israel intelligence officers revealed that they detected NSA materials on Kaspersky networks in 2015. Kaspersky officials later admitted that they became aware of unusual files on an unidentified contractor's computer, and they did not immediately report their findings. In December 2017, the U.S. government banned the use of Kaspersky Lab products for all federal agencies and government employees.

A hacker group calling itself The Shadow Brokers claimed it had stolen NSA files in 2017. It released batches of files on the internet, some of which allegedly contained the Internet Protocol addresses of computer servers that were compromised by Equation Group -- hackers reported to have ties to the NSA.

The continual dumping of NSA files has exposed zero-day exploits targeting firewalls and routers, Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities and other cyberweapons. The NSA, according to the ongoing leaks, has been stockpiling vulnerabilities, most notably the Windows EternalBlue exploit used by cybercriminals in the global WannaCry ransomware attacks.

The FBI arrested Harold T. Martin III, a former NSA contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, in August 2016 and accused him of violating the Espionage Act for unlawful possession of terabytes of confidential materials allegedly taken from the NSA and other intelligence agencies over a 20-year period. A grand jury indicted him in February 2018. The case is still pending as prosecutors wrestle with criminal counts and the sheer volume of materials.

In October 2020, the NSA released an advisory specifying 25 publicly known vulnerabilities actively exploited or being scanned by Chinese state-sponsored actors. Later that year, the NSA verified that SolarWinds Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 2 eliminated the malicious code used in the extensive SolarWinds hack.

In January 2021, for the first time, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the DNI and the NSA publicly suggested Russian threat actors were responsible for the SolarWinds supply chain attack.

That April, the Biden administration formally attributed the SolarWinds attacks to the Russian government's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The FBI, NSA and CISA jointly warned that state-sponsored, SVR-allied threats were actively exploiting known vulnerabilities to get access to national security and government-associated networks.

Also that April, the NSA found four new Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities, of which three were critical.

Learn more about how the SolarWinds attack puts national security strategy on display.

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Watch: NSA Ajit Doval is Ambitious, Very Good at Sniffing Power and Being on the Right Side of itAS Dulat – The Wire

Posted: December 21, 2022 at 2:41 am

Watch: NSA Ajit Doval is Ambitious, Very Good at Sniffing Power and Being on the Right Side of itAS Dulat  The Wire

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Watch: NSA Ajit Doval is Ambitious, Very Good at Sniffing Power and Being on the Right Side of itAS Dulat - The Wire

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Shockwaves win another championship, this time at the NSA Fresno Pilgrimfest – Lompoc Record

Posted: December 12, 2022 at 5:22 am

Shockwaves win another championship, this time at the NSA Fresno Pilgrimfest  Lompoc Record

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Shockwaves win another championship, this time at the NSA Fresno Pilgrimfest - Lompoc Record

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EFCC secures forfeiture of N755m, luxury assets from ex-AGF, former aide to NSA The Nation Newspaper – The Nation Newspaper

Posted: November 23, 2022 at 4:21 am

EFCC secures forfeiture of N755m, luxury assets from ex-AGF, former aide to NSA The Nation Newspaper  The Nation Newspaper

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EFCC secures forfeiture of N755m, luxury assets from ex-AGF, former aide to NSA The Nation Newspaper - The Nation Newspaper

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