The NSA, short for National Security Agency, is a national-level intelligence agency. The NSA are responsible for global monitoring, collection and the processing of information and data. It specializes in a discipline called signals intelligence. The NSA relies on different techniques to perform this task of which many go unnoticed by the public.
It was started to decipher coded messages in World War ll. It was later officially founded by Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became one of the largest intelligence organisations in the US. Currently, the NSA acquires worldwide mass data and has been known to bug electronic systems to acquire it. The NSA, as well as the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), have a presence in many countries across the globe.
There have been many different opinions about the NSA because of their work. For example, they spied on anti-Vietnam war leaders which many people didn’t agree with. In 2013, a lot of the NSA’s secrets were reviewed by a former NSA worker. According to the documents leaked, the NSA stores the communications of over a billion people in many different countries. A lot of other information is owned by the NSA that we have no idea about.
The origins of the NSA can be traced back to the First World War. In 1919 the US government founded a cipher bureau called the Black Chamber. The Chamber was the first organisation focusing on cryptanalysis in the US. It was funded by the army and the state department and was disguised as a commercial code company in New York. Its purpose was to break ciphers and codes that were sent by other nations. They persuaded many Telegram companies to give them access to cable traffic from other countries. Once these companies found out about the misuse of their information, they discontinued their work with the Black Chamber. The Chamber was shut down in 1929 by the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson.
The NSA helped the US state in many different situations including World War II, the Vietnam War and in general the time between the 1980s and the 1990s. Even though they have helped in many situations they still own a lot of data and information about the public. There are many mixed opinions about this organisation, as one can imagine, with the work that they do.