Communications of the ACM
Nsa Gets Geeky After Dark, New Docs Show
It's an agency staffed by some of the government's top hackers, brainiest cryptographers, and most sophisticated network defenders. But when employees at the NSA aren't playing Big Brother, pwning foreign networks or coming to the aid of hacked companies, it turns out they’re (surprise!) up to some exceptionally geeky business in their spare time.
Government Attic has a collection of documents, finally obtained two years after the organization filed a Freedom of Information Request, that detail the super-secret spy agency’s various extracurricular activities. The 64-page release describes, mostly in newsletters and group announcements, the goings-on of 12 different "Learned Organizations" formed by NSA staff members.
Most of the clubs revolve around cryptoanalysis, communications analysis and language translation. Which is pretty much what employees at the NSA do from 9 to 5--and, it seems, still shell out $15 in annual fees to do on evenings and weekends, too.
From Wired
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