Fund the Bureaucracy

by Leon W.

Fund the Bureaucracy

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Introduction / History

Cipher Bureau

• First code-breaking organization
• The predecessor of the NSA
• Founded after WWI
• Was disguised as a commercial code-selling company in NYC
• Its true objective was to aid American diplomacy by decrypting other nations' messages.
• Shut down in 1929 by the US Secretary of State

President Harry S. Truman formally established the NSA

Steps toward the NSA

• Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) created during WWII to intercept Axis powers communications
• Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) is centralized in 1949 to bring together all cryptologic activities
• In 1951, President Truman modified the AFSA and redesigned it as the NSA

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Budget / Funding History

The NSA is a part of the United States intelligence budget. The 16 agencies that the budget funds are divided into the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). The NSA is part of both the NIP and MIP.

The MIP Budget has been recovering from a decreasing budget appropriation ever since the end of the Iraq War, the lowest budget amount being $16.5 billion in 2015.

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Purpose

• The NSA participates in global monitoring, processes information for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, and protects US communication networks and information systems.
• Many of the measures the NSA takes to accomplish its tasks are clandestine, meaning that the operation goes unnoticed by the public or specific forces of opposition.
• The NSA plays a role in the function of government and as a part of the federal bureaucracy by providing information security to American citizens and protecting the country from outside attacks on privacy and intel
• The NSA is a part of the US Department of Defense, which is headed by the Director of National Intelligence.

Benefits

The NSA benefits the general public by providing security for communication over networks and provides defense from national security problems.

NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, MD

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Leadership & Organization

Paul M. Nakasone, Director of the NSA

(fun fact: he was born in Saint Paul, MN and went to White Bear Lake HS)

In the mid-1990s, the NSA was divided into five Directorates:

Operations Directorate: signal collection and processing

Technology and Systems Directorate: developing signal collection/processing tech

Information Systems Security Directorate: NSA's communications and security missions

Plans, Policy, and Programs Directorate: staff support and general agency direction

Support Services Directorate: logistical and administrative support

The NSA is now divided into more complicated factions with far more specificities.

• NSA employee count is classified, but there are an estimated 1,000 system administrators and 30,000 employees stationed at the headquarters and other facilities.

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Major Challenges

Historical Challenge: The NSA's Venona project in 1952 exposed a massive Soviet espionage effort that was threatening national security.

Picture: Code-breakers in the NSA working on the Venona project.

Major Challenge: Keith Alexander, former NSA director, reported that the agency has helped to thwart more than 50 terrorist attacks since the September 2011 attacks.

Recent Positive News Coverage: Just 3 days ago, the NSA released Ghidra to the public, a free tool for reverse engineering malware to help with the advancement of the agency's defensive cybersecurity mission.

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WHY FUND THE NSA?

NSA should continue to be funded by Congress because... the United States Constitution's provisions must be fulfilled and can only be done so if NSA continues to be supported.

US Constitution: Section VIII, Article II

"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion:"

As the article above in the Constitution states, the president and executive branch have an obligation to use military force to suppress invasions of the country and other related conflicts. In the modern world, these conflicts have increasingly shifted to attacks in cyberspace that threaten the security of the country. In order for the country to be protected under this provision of the Constitution, the NSA is an important defender that must continue to be funded in order to serve rightfully under the Constitution's purpose.

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WHY FUND THE NSA?

NSA should continue to be funded by Congress because... of the sheer amount of cyber attacks exacted upon the United States.

According to studies done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the United States has been the victim of the most incidents of cyber espionage and cyber warfare by a long shot, with the number of incidents essentially tripling the country with the second-most, India (refer to the infographic on the next slide).

This is why it is important to fund agencies like the NSA, so that they have the means to create tools like Ghidra, which can combat these instances of cyber crime committed by other countries that invade American privacy and cybersecurity (most often Russia and China).

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WHY FUND THE NSA?

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The End