IP: NSA abandons pizza box info-delivery, switches to Intelink

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>
>
>Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 08:35:33 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Roland Grefer <btirg@uis.doleta.gov>
>Subject: No more top-secret pizza boxes (fwd) 
>
>FYI.
>
>http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=1150070213968
>
>------------------------------------------------------
>
>Headline: No more top-secret pizza boxes
>Subhead: Spies: A book by a former National Security Agency official gives
>        an unprecedented look at the super-secret agency and tells of
>        NSA's development of a computer network. 
>
>
>By Neal Thompson
>
>SUN STAFF
>
>
>"A book about NSA has never been written by an insider. 
>It was tough getting through the system because people were opposed 
>to it. There is a school of thought that says you wear your trench 
>coat and your dark glasses and you don't say anything." 
>Tom Martin,author of "Top Secret Intranet"
>
>  Espionage watchers consider the early 1990s a low point for 
>the National Security Agency.
>
>Around that time, the Internet was beginning to change how people 
>communicate, becoming a new tool for everyday life. But while 
>the rest of the nation was e-mailing each other, NSA was still 
>delivering top-secret intelligence reports to Washington inside 
>pizza boxes.
>
>An agency that in its heyday had helped create the first computers 
>had become appallingly low-tech. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf even 
>complained about it during 1991's Persian Gulf war when he 
>said intelligence reports on Iraq's military were taking 
>too long to reach his hands.
>
>That has all changed recently with the development of an internal 
>computer network for spies called Intelink, which brings up-to-the-minute 
>spy data to hundreds of thousands of spies, diplomats and soldiers 
>in the field, as well as Congress and the White House.
>
>Completed in 1996, Intelink has become an invaluable tool for 
>the 13 intelligence community agencies that use it to disseminate 
>and share their secret information.
>
>Intelink consists of highly classified data that users access 
>at the click of a button. Data that once took hours to reach 
>Washington now cross the globe in a second.
>
>Just like logging onto America Online or the World Wide Web, 
>intelligence analysts and military personnel log on to Intelink's 
>home page, where they see a map of the world and can click, say, 
>Bosnia to access intelligence reports, video clips, satellite 
>photos, databases and status reports. Users can "chat" 
>online with other spies or exchange e-mail on a topic.
>
>The evolution of NSA's in-house Internet coincides with 
>a new philosophy: Why struggle to be a technological leader when 
>it's easier and cheaper to buy all the cutting-edge software 
>we need from Microsoft and others?
>
>How the NSA changed
>
>The story behind that transformation is detailed in a new book 
>by a former top NSA official -- a book noted as much for the 
>fact that it was published at all as for its content.
>
>When Tom Martin started working for NSA in 1960, he signed a 
>letter promising never to write a book about his super-secret 
>employer. In a sign of changing times in the intelligence community, 
>Martin unveils previously classified details about how NSA spies 
>on the world.
>
>And he does so with NSA's approval. Martin's book pulls 
>back the curtain on the gears of NSA's machinery, providing 
>a rare nuts-and-bolts look at how today's high-tech spies 
>do their job.
>
>"Top Secret Intranet: How U.S. Intelligence Built Intelink 
>-- the world's largest, most secure network" is also 
>a fascinating glimpse at the slow and sometimes reluctant thawing 
>of an obsessively secretive agency that once denied its own existence.
>
>[...]