Posted by
intelblogman on Friday, March 30, 2007 12:54:59 PM
The National Security Agency or
NSA is the most secretive of the intelligence agencies. It happens to also be the largest agency and the agency with the highest budget. The NSA conducts intelligence through communications interception and provides the
IC with what is called
SIGNALS intelligence. The NSA is the United States's phone bugger. They can tap into not only land lines but also cell phones. They snatch up the phone waves with their powerful satellites and relay them to analysts to be translated. The National Security Agency mainly listens in on foreign nationals but anyone who says bomb, Allah, Al-Queda, or dozens of other key words multiple times in a setting run the risk of being red-flagged and recorded. However these recorded calls will never ever be listened to be a human unless it is found that you are a threat to national security. This description of NSA is brief to say the least. For the dedicated reader the book
Body of Secrets gives everything worth knowing about the National Security Agency. The movie
Enemy of the State is also about the NSA but disregard the whole conspiracy theme.