What is the NSA?

One of the great, largely unknown stories of World War Two was the amazing work American and British personnel did in the field of cryptography.  These men and women were analysts working for the allied military and their job was to break enemy codes and intercept communications.  The two most famous examples were the deciphering of the German "Enigma" encoding/decoding machine, and breaking the Japanese code, which was key in America's turning point victory at the Battle of Midway.  Today those functions are handled by the National Security Agency (NSA).

America's national defense structure was reorganized in 1947 due to inadequacies identified during the Second World War.  The Department of War became the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created, and the National Security Council (NSC) established to coordinate this network of stakeholders.  The CIA handled mostly "human intelligence" gathering and analysis but did not have the experience or equipment for electronic intelligence.  As a result in 1952, the National Security Agency was added to the national defense network.  The NSA is based at Fort Meade in Maryland and is primarily a military staffed organization with some civilians contractors.  It handles all cryptography/cryptanalysis and information security for the U.S. Government.   and its computer network

Originally the NSA intercepted and catalogued television, radio, internet, and telephone conversations of suspected enemy organizations and individuals overseas.  The NSA has the most advanced supercomputers in the world to accomplish this task.  While some analysis is done in house, much of the intelligence gathered that is deemed important is sent on to the CIA or individual branches of the military to be corroborated with other intelligence sources. 

After 9/11 the NSA was also given the task of watching and countering cyber-terror.  Their role expanded in 2008 when provisions under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were used to justify expanding their intelligence gathering to domestic targets and the public at large.  The FISA court, an ultra-secret group of judges that can approve classified warrants, allowed for this controversial move that some have claimed is illegal and a violation of privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution. 

Under President Obama these activities have been expanded to where all telephone and internet communications can be collected using metadata collection and data mining procedures, which may not provide detailed transcripts of conversations but track origin, length, time, and destination of communications.  Computer programs like PRISM allow for similar analysis of internet feeds.

Intelligence gathering before and after the creation of the NSA has been important in winning battles and in maintaining the security of the country.  With the amount of data out there in a computerized world the job of the NSA is even more important; however, with great power comes great responsibility.  Enemies, both conventional and terrorist, want to see a democratic republic like ours turn on itself, to violate the very liberties that define the country.  The NSA is a pawn in the battle between security and liberty.  A country can not have both, so that is the crux of the debate.