Re: public privacy, NSA resources

[pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu (Pat Farrell)]

A fellow cypherpunk lister says about the number of employees
at NSA:
>40,000?  Is this for real? Does anyone know how this would compare to
>FBI or CIA?  Also, does anyone have a clue on the black budget?  The
>author seems to hint here that while it is not "readily discernible" it
>might be inferrable.
>
The number of employees at the FBI is public info. I don't
have it at hand. CIA employment used to be secret, and may
still be. Of course you can buy a picture from SPOT and count
the cars for an estimate. At both agencies, there are a
significant number of contract employees, who are not on the
employment rolls, but are efectively the same as government
employees. They aren't counted in public info.

I can't guess at the number of NSA folks. But I can relate an
story....

I gave a paper at this year's National Computer Security
Conference, in Baltimore. Like all conferences, it had a
registration area, vendor's booths, etc. 

Following form, it had nice folks behind counters with signs
over the top, with the usual:
	Prepaid A-F | Prepaid G-M | .... | Walkup | Press | ...

sections. What surprized me was the row of counters labeled:
NSA A-E | NSA F-H | ..... NSA W-Z

There were as many NSA booths as all the rest combined. (ok,
+- 10%) 

Another aside. The NCSC is essentially a front for the NSA.
NCSC exists but has no more than two employees, one is the
secretary to an NSA official.

Pat


Pat Farrell,      Grad Student                       pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
PGP key available via finger or request           #include standard.disclaimer