17 ms·

90-year-old Cryptanalytic Efforts Must Stay Secret, says NSA

198 points by wolframio 10y ago

chris_va 10y ago
No one (well, almost no one) ever got fired keeping something confidential. Agencies always get referred to as "The NSA" or something, as if the collective consciousness of everyone working there should be merged. Let's replace "The NSA" with "Joe, who happens to work at the NSA, doing a spot check". Joe, who happens to work at the NSA, while doing a spot check decides to keep redactions in 20-year-old document confidential doesn't sound like as much of a headline, though.
- caf 10y ago
  The very ordinariness of the institutionalised bias against declassification and its predictable result of large numbers of things remaining unnecessarily classified is the whole point.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Point, but there is generally a specific timeframe for documents to combat that tendency. Usually ~25 years. The document in question here is only 20 years old, even if the information it references is older.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      I thought anything written past 72 year should ago is declassified? Or is that just for the census?
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    In government and other large bureaucracies, it's difficult to get into trouble because even a half witted person can deflect blame around to make it difficult to actually censure anyone. With stuff like this or filling out time sheets/expense reports, it's really clear cut. Employee X signed the form to declassify document Y. Since people in charge of bureaucracies like to figuratively torture and execute bearers of bad news, it's easier to err on the side of inaction.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Government agencies should be held responsible for the actions of their members. All kinds of bad things happen if they're not.
  - eru 10y ago
    It cuts both ways: And bosses should be held responsible for the actions of their companies / agencies. All kinds of bad things happen if they're not.
    - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      They should, yes. Are you saying those are mutually exclusive?
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I suspect there are psychological reasons for this. Excessive classification projects more power than may actually exist. The longer the redaction lasts, the more credence is lent to vast conspiracy theories: aliens, illuminati, take your pick. Either way, the message is clear: "don't fuck with us."
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  That said, the more classified stuff you have the more it will cost you to keep track of. There's literally a dollar cost for classifying information. I'm sure there's a few people at the NSA who would rather use the money spent on storing classified information to circumvent the constitution.
  - justin_vanw 10y ago
    I don't think this is right. I worked in military intelligence and for a civilian agency. Tons of stuff is classified, sits in a safe for years and years, and eventually just gets shredded. Probably 99.99% of it. There is a cost to declassify documents, but for the mountains of stuff that never gets declassified (because it just goes into the memory black hole) there is no cost. Honestly I think there is just a CYA mentality to just slap SECRET on documents rather than trying to thread the needle and figure out the exact correct classification. In theory these documents should be classified at the paragraph level, and in that case things like public statements by public figures would be unclassified even if they were a part of a highly classified document. People will properly classify things if there is some reason to, but day to day it's not trivial to do and in the end nobody sees their goal as 'get the exact right classification on everything' vs 'find a terrorist or figure out what russia is planning'.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Would one be correct in suspecting that many classified documents are operational reports? ISTM there could be personal reasons to keep the public from ever finding out what its agents have done in secret. Look at all the shit we give public servants whose deeds are public, e.g. Robert Moses.
cperciva 10y ago
It's easy to imagine scenarios where this continued classification could be appropriate. Remember, classification doesn't just attach to facts; it also attaches to how that information was obtained. If, for example, the censored paragraph was "a US agent placed within the Soviet Communist Party participated in the design of Soviet ciphers and deliberately weakened them", and that agent continued working in the USSR for several decades, then it could only be declassified if everything that agent had ever been involved with was no longer sensitive.
- berkeleynerd 10y ago
  Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic." It's the NSA. It's espionage. These things tend to be classified by default. So, I'm not suspicious it's some arbitrary thing, like the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      >These things tend to be classified by default. "Classified by default" is semantically equivalent to "knee-jerk reaction". Nobody is claiming it's arbitrary. The claim is instead that it's systematic, and stupidly so to the point where it may well be the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating. Wouldn't be the first time...
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        I'd call it "a matter of principle" rather than "knee-jerk reaction".
ktRolster 10y ago
I understand. That was the time of the star gate chasm, with those secrets de-classified, the location of the translerion will be revealed, and the wrong candidate will be elected president.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Yeah they don't want to reveal to Red Skull that they've located the Tesseract.
  - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
    Is this some reference I'm not getting?
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Hey at least my goofy words are googleable. "Translerion", that's some top-shelf secret voodoo right there. We're probably all on a very exclusive and soon-to-be very unfortunate list, now.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      ad-hoc fiction writing, right here on hacker news! Join in and tell us about your secret base in the Agoricon!
iaw 10y ago
On a related note, is anyone familiar with the blank segments on ITAR? I have been puzzling over what they could be reserved for for a few years now.
- erlehmann_ 10y ago
  Could you be more specific? If so, please be.
  - iaw 10y ago
    §120.43 is marked [Reservered] §120.50 and §120.51 are marked XXX §121.1 : e-f and j-w after "Note to Paragraph (d)" in Category IV are Reserved d and h-w in Category VI are reserved etc. [1]https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html
- internaut 10y ago
  Time travel coordinates.
  - iaw 10y ago
    I am confident this is the only reasonable conclusion. Congress being so practical and all...
andrewclunn 10y ago
Man that must be one shell of a cipher.
kazinator 10y ago
> reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security. So they're holding out for ... indescribable damage? ;)
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  Essentially, yes. If you can't describe the damage it doesn't count. Isn't that what we want?
jonathankoren 10y ago
I one time saw a story on 60 Minutes many years ago that was either about the CIA or the NSA. It doesn't really matter. During the interview, the reporter asked what the oldest thing still classified was. It's from World War I, and refers to sources and methods. When pressed that everyone involved is dead, and the former enemies are now allies, the answer came back that it was sources and methods. Apparently, it's recipe for invisible ink.[0] [0] http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/jmpoldest.html http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/jmpoldest.html
- jkot 10y ago
  I think Vatican archives might have some older classified documents.
joebergeron 10y ago
>> "Details of what was thought to be a Bolshevik code used in Java in 1928" What a rich history Java has. Wonder if they were developing trusty ol' JavaScript back then too... ;)
- mikeash 10y ago
  Of course, JavaScript has been around for a long time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_script https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_script
dogma1138 10y ago
This blog post is the reason why the NSA or any other government agencies do not want to declassify documents at all. What the blog post fail to understand is that: a) Intelligence operations run for years and decades, you wouldn't be hard pressed to find 5 documents over a period of 90 years which are cross referenced / linked by CODEWORD level programmes. So if this document was referring "SPRING CRICKET" which references "SPRINGROLL" which references "CHINATOWN" which references "BOUNCY CASTLE" which might reference "PRISM" for all we know. You don't give people bread crumbs. b) Intelligence operations involve human assets, even if it was in the 1920's it can still have human assets who are alive or their descendants, and it doesn't have to be a US agent, it could be some soviet mathematician who passed information to the US (willingly or not) that has living descendants in modern day Russia and there is absolutely no reason to colossally fuck up their lives today by revealing that fact. Declassifying information is a very expensive process you need to do a full impact analysis on every word in every paragraph and cross reference it with any other materials that are revealed, considering the age of these documents many of them might not be digitized which makes this process even more expensive and time consuming. Beyond that once a document is set for release a very expensive process of document recovery is kicked off, all copies and revisions of the document must be collected to ensure that no revisions other than the approved for declassification and no unredacted copies remain to be found or leaked. And once you release some document which is redacted if by some coincidence it is missed by the OSINT departments of foreign intelligence agencies some 'BuzzFeed' "reporter" that his next meal of cup ramen noodles is dependant on his daily blogspam quota will dig it up and make a click bait out of it and depending on how sensational they make out to be going to be picked up by some bigger news outlets and by then every counterintelligence outfit will step up their game if only to have a response to this for their next oversight hearing and if they kick their bug sweeps and mole hunts into high gear they might actually find something even it's completely unrelated. The likelihood of a tool/method/source that has been used in 1925 being relevant today is about zero, the likelihood of them not being able to complete an impact analysis on that paragraph and hence having to redact it or not wanting to get the grandchild of some Russian asset harassed by the FSB the media and the immediate public is considerably more likely.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
1945throwaway 10y ago
This seems like a good thread to ask this: is there any way to find out if a document has been declassified? I ask this because I came into possession of a document from 1945 which is marked classified (it is a prototype computer user manual) and I would like to make sure that it is actually declassified. If it isn't, then even asking about it seems... problematic. I expect that it would be, but with the amount of overclassification that occurs, I can't bet on it. At some point I'd love to donate it to the ACM museum or something, but I don't want to get in trouble over a historical document, so I'm just keeping it for now.
- tbihl 10y ago
  It looks like they redid classification markings in 2006, so what I thought I knew (and likely the same for plenty of people here) is probably not applicable. In particular, there's a release date now, or a statement saying how the declassification is handled. Here's the newer instruction so you can see if any of it is applicable to what you found: https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/af053006.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/af053006.pdf

198 points by wolframio 10y ago

No one (well, almost no one) ever got fired keeping something confidential. Agencies always get referred to as "The NSA" or something, as if the collective consciousness of everyone working there should be merged. Let's replace "The NSA" with "Joe, who happens to work at the NSA, doing a spot check". Joe, who happens to work at the NSA, while doing a spot check decides to keep redactions in 20-year-old document confidential doesn't sound like as much of a headline, though.

caf 10y ago
The very ordinariness of the institutionalised bias against declassification and its predictable result of large numbers of things remaining unnecessarily classified is the whole point.
- chris_va 10y ago
  Point, but there is generally a specific timeframe for documents to combat that tendency. Usually ~25 years. The document in question here is only 20 years old, even if the information it references is older.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    I thought anything written past 72 year should ago is declassified? Or is that just for the census?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  In government and other large bureaucracies, it's difficult to get into trouble because even a half witted person can deflect blame around to make it difficult to actually censure anyone. With stuff like this or filling out time sheets/expense reports, it's really clear cut. Employee X signed the form to declassify document Y. Since people in charge of bureaucracies like to figuratively torture and execute bearers of bad news, it's easier to err on the side of inaction.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Government agencies should be held responsible for the actions of their members. All kinds of bad things happen if they're not.
- eru 10y ago
  It cuts both ways: And bosses should be held responsible for the actions of their companies / agencies. All kinds of bad things happen if they're not.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    They should, yes. Are you saying those are mutually exclusive?

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

I suspect there are psychological reasons for this. Excessive classification projects more power than may actually exist. The longer the redaction lasts, the more credence is lent to vast conspiracy theories: aliens, illuminati, take your pick. Either way, the message is clear: "don't fuck with us."

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
That said, the more classified stuff you have the more it will cost you to keep track of. There's literally a dollar cost for classifying information. I'm sure there's a few people at the NSA who would rather use the money spent on storing classified information to circumvent the constitution.
- justin_vanw 10y ago
  I don't think this is right. I worked in military intelligence and for a civilian agency. Tons of stuff is classified, sits in a safe for years and years, and eventually just gets shredded. Probably 99.99% of it. There is a cost to declassify documents, but for the mountains of stuff that never gets declassified (because it just goes into the memory black hole) there is no cost. Honestly I think there is just a CYA mentality to just slap SECRET on documents rather than trying to thread the needle and figure out the exact correct classification. In theory these documents should be classified at the paragraph level, and in that case things like public statements by public figures would be unclassified even if they were a part of a highly classified document. People will properly classify things if there is some reason to, but day to day it's not trivial to do and in the end nobody sees their goal as 'get the exact right classification on everything' vs 'find a terrorist or figure out what russia is planning'.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Would one be correct in suspecting that many classified documents are operational reports? ISTM there could be personal reasons to keep the public from ever finding out what its agents have done in secret. Look at all the shit we give public servants whose deeds are public, e.g. Robert Moses.

cperciva 10y ago

It's easy to imagine scenarios where this continued classification could be appropriate. Remember, classification doesn't just attach to facts; it also attaches to how that information was obtained. If, for example, the censored paragraph was "a US agent placed within the Soviet Communist Party participated in the design of Soviet ciphers and deliberately weakened them", and that agent continued working in the USSR for several decades, then it could only be declassified if everything that agent had ever been involved with was no longer sensitive.

berkeleynerd 10y ago
Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic." It's the NSA. It's espionage. These things tend to be classified by default. So, I'm not suspicious it's some arbitrary thing, like the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    >These things tend to be classified by default. "Classified by default" is semantically equivalent to "knee-jerk reaction". Nobody is claiming it's arbitrary. The claim is instead that it's systematic, and stupidly so to the point where it may well be the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating. Wouldn't be the first time...
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      I'd call it "a matter of principle" rather than "knee-jerk reaction".

ktRolster 10y ago

I understand. That was the time of the star gate chasm, with those secrets de-classified, the location of the translerion will be revealed, and the wrong candidate will be elected president.

jessaustin 10y ago
Yeah they don't want to reveal to Red Skull that they've located the Tesseract.
- knowaveragejoe 10y ago
  Is this some reference I'm not getting?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Hey at least my goofy words are googleable. "Translerion", that's some top-shelf secret voodoo right there. We're probably all on a very exclusive and soon-to-be very unfortunate list, now.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    ad-hoc fiction writing, right here on hacker news! Join in and tell us about your secret base in the Agoricon!

iaw 10y ago

On a related note, is anyone familiar with the blank segments on ITAR? I have been puzzling over what they could be reserved for for a few years now.

erlehmann_ 10y ago
Could you be more specific? If so, please be.
- iaw 10y ago
  §120.43 is marked [Reservered] §120.50 and §120.51 are marked XXX §121.1 : e-f and j-w after "Note to Paragraph (d)" in Category IV are Reserved d and h-w in Category VI are reserved etc. [1]https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html
internaut 10y ago
Time travel coordinates.
- iaw 10y ago
  I am confident this is the only reasonable conclusion. Congress being so practical and all...

andrewclunn 10y ago

Man that must be one shell of a cipher.

kazinator 10y ago

> reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security. So they're holding out for ... indescribable damage? ;)

Godel_unicode 10y ago
Essentially, yes. If you can't describe the damage it doesn't count. Isn't that what we want?

jonathankoren 10y ago

I one time saw a story on 60 Minutes many years ago that was either about the CIA or the NSA. It doesn't really matter. During the interview, the reporter asked what the oldest thing still classified was. It's from World War I, and refers to sources and methods. When pressed that everyone involved is dead, and the former enemies are now allies, the answer came back that it was sources and methods. Apparently, it's recipe for invisible ink.[0] [0] http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/jmpoldest.html http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/jmpoldest.html

jkot 10y ago
I think Vatican archives might have some older classified documents.

joebergeron 10y ago

>> "Details of what was thought to be a Bolshevik code used in Java in 1928" What a rich history Java has. Wonder if they were developing trusty ol' JavaScript back then too... ;)

mikeash 10y ago
Of course, JavaScript has been around for a long time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_script https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_script

dogma1138 10y ago

This blog post is the reason why the NSA or any other government agencies do not want to declassify documents at all. What the blog post fail to understand is that: a) Intelligence operations run for years and decades, you wouldn't be hard pressed to find 5 documents over a period of 90 years which are cross referenced / linked by CODEWORD level programmes. So if this document was referring "SPRING CRICKET" which references "SPRINGROLL" which references "CHINATOWN" which references "BOUNCY CASTLE" which might reference "PRISM" for all we know. You don't give people bread crumbs. b) Intelligence operations involve human assets, even if it was in the 1920's it can still have human assets who are alive or their descendants, and it doesn't have to be a US agent, it could be some soviet mathematician who passed information to the US (willingly or not) that has living descendants in modern day Russia and there is absolutely no reason to colossally fuck up their lives today by revealing that fact. Declassifying information is a very expensive process you need to do a full impact analysis on every word in every paragraph and cross reference it with any other materials that are revealed, considering the age of these documents many of them might not be digitized which makes this process even more expensive and time consuming. Beyond that once a document is set for release a very expensive process of document recovery is kicked off, all copies and revisions of the document must be collected to ensure that no revisions other than the approved for declassification and no unredacted copies remain to be found or leaked. And once you release some document which is redacted if by some coincidence it is missed by the OSINT departments of foreign intelligence agencies some 'BuzzFeed' "reporter" that his next meal of cup ramen noodles is dependant on his daily blogspam quota will dig it up and make a click bait out of it and depending on how sensational they make out to be going to be picked up by some bigger news outlets and by then every counterintelligence outfit will step up their game if only to have a response to this for their next oversight hearing and if they kick their bug sweeps and mole hunts into high gear they might actually find something even it's completely unrelated. The likelihood of a tool/method/source that has been used in 1925 being relevant today is about zero, the likelihood of them not being able to complete an impact analysis on that paragraph and hence having to redact it or not wanting to get the grandchild of some Russian asset harassed by the FSB the media and the immediate public is considerably more likely.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

1945throwaway 10y ago

This seems like a good thread to ask this: is there any way to find out if a document has been declassified? I ask this because I came into possession of a document from 1945 which is marked classified (it is a prototype computer user manual) and I would like to make sure that it is actually declassified. If it isn't, then even asking about it seems... problematic. I expect that it would be, but with the amount of overclassification that occurs, I can't bet on it. At some point I'd love to donate it to the ACM museum or something, but I don't want to get in trouble over a historical document, so I'm just keeping it for now.

tbihl 10y ago
It looks like they redid classification markings in 2006, so what I thought I knew (and likely the same for plenty of people here) is probably not applicable. In particular, there's a release date now, or a statement saying how the declassification is handled. Here's the newer instruction so you can see if any of it is applicable to what you found: https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/af053006.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/af053006.pdf