Living Down the Street from NSA
I've been following the NSA scandals and related matters since I was a teenager and found out that there was this super secret organization down the road from my house which pretended it didn't exist and hired Marines to guard it. I heard all sorts of stories and knew people whose Daddies couldn't talk about what they did for a living and worked there. One day I took a few tests to see if I could work there. Never did get a job there. I'm kinda glad now. The place was known as the National Security Agency (NSA).
The Marines Attack Savage
One day, summer, (I think 1977) a couple of marines from NSA were engaging in recreation at the Savage Maryland Swimming hole on the Little Patuxent (we always called it the Savage river, sort of a joke), and some local toughs roughed them up. I was at work in the Savage IGA and along came a bunch of military vehicles and folks looking for those toughs. I believe an entire platoon of Marines moved through our town that day and they found the two guys I heard and roughed them up.
NSA vs NSA
Shortly after that the Marines were replaced with Hired Guards. Never got that job either. I finished College and was in Buddhism and an organization that called itself "NSA" Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai, but was really a branch of a Japanese "New religion." I really thought I could save the world with "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" for about 20 years from 1974 to 1994. During that time, NSA the spy org, receded to the back of my mind except as a potential employer. Never did get a job there. They require really scary polygraph tests and since I only know I was born in Corona because it says so on my birth certificate, just the thought of all those wires scares me. I got a job out of college, 1978-1979 working for a microfilming company called Datacorp. The place operated 24/7 and I burned out after 2 years. Fell in love with a girl who didn't really love me back. Unemployed. Soon after that in the early 80s I made friends with a Polish dissident named Helena and she got me to help one of her German dissident friends leave Germany. Eventually I did get her out of there. It took about 4 years and a trip to East Germany around 1982. When I came back I almost married a Brazilian. I was out of the running for ever having a security clearance. I did have friends in Buddhism who were in security. At that time many of them lived at Fort Meade. I had a weird life. Explaining that during a polygraph test would have been a challenge.
It turns out the way around all that is to join the military, get a good job assignment, and they then take care of all that stuff. Civilian tracks are much harder. For me getting into my career was a catch 22, got degree, but they wanted "experience" or a "clearance", how do I get that? In the late 70's and early 80's even the military wasn't hiring for good jobs. I should have joined anyway. I took my bachelor's degree and applied it to humping furniture. Got hired by a moving and storage company.
Trying to get into a Programming Job
I had done deliveries of microfilm from 1978-1980. But when I blew that job I found myself unable to continue working with Computers and programming. I took classes. I took a job with a Moving and Storage Company. I wasn't doing programming but my company, Burnham Services, got contracts. My company got some real good contracts delivering stuff for IBM and other Computer manufacturers. I removed or delivered Giant computers and replaced them with ever smaller units. From 1983 or so til I quit approximately 1988. I mostly worked in the Warehouse. Though I participated in some big moves and did whatever they asked me. I married my wife in 1984 and had a son. In 1987 I had a daughter. In 1988 my X became my X and left me, twice. Around the end of 1988 my house would be hit by a drunk Driver.
Shipping Computers
We had contracts to deliver the first PC's. These were big IBM machines with floppy drives as big as vinyl records and limited amounts of memory. I was expert at tracking down missing shipments, but also good at loading and unloading trucks so I was constantly involved in finding and tracking shipments and machinery. Around 1987 or 1988 our company was expanding so much that we were getting contracts in cities where our non-union status was a handicap. I would have joined a union in a heartbeat, but management was religiously against them and operated like the inquisition on the subject. We tried to open a branch in a Union city and there was a shooting war! Our drivers were carrying guns and showing me bullet holes when I was loading and unloading them. We had something called the "Burnham Express" and I was detailed to make sure they got in and out on schedule like a clock. I was proud of that job. It also took me off the night shift where I'd been for a long time. Anyway...
Around that time, we started shipping things with classified markings. Why they shipped them through our warehouses made no sense to me, but we were doing it. We had stuff marked for NSA, State Department, Commerce department, and other places I was sure that if I talked about somebody might off me. Around that time we had shipments going to places like NSA. The people who delivered them had to have clearances. I watched every day, while driving to work as they expanded the NSA buildings. They built 2 buildings with an inner shell and an outer shell, and I believe the purpose was for electronic shielding.
People I knew who worked there told me stories. I learned NSA was not supposed to spy on Americans, but could collect useful information from the key presses of a manual type-writer and that most encrypted messages and other measures were a waste of time. I'm sure some of the information was disinformation, but folks working for NSA proudly took credit for the USA defeating communism even before the Berlin Wall Fell. NSA collated the information from other agencies, I heard, and that information included the ability to read license plates from space. The person who told me that later denied he said it. Maybe it was hype. But that is how NSA was to folks who lived in it's neighborhood. Super Secret, staffed with paranoid people who didn't want you even walking near, and who patrolled the grounds with arms in armored vehicles -- and that was before the Berlin Wall Fell.
Inslaw and Me
Almost a year into working the "Burnham Express", we had some of our machines start disappearing. Funny thing is this was after we upped the security with razor wire and a guard tower. Our warehouse was so secure I used to consider how easy it would be to turn our giant warehouse into a prison.
Anyway, I came into work one morning, around 1986-87 and my immediate boss, a guy named Ray, asked me if I'd seen or moved these particular boxes with computers in them. I hadn't of course, but I spent the next hour trying to help him find the missing equipment. Over the next few months more machines started disappearing. These computers had software pre-loaded on them, and that apparently was what the thieves were after. But what was astounding was who was involved in solving the problem.
Around the time the machines started disappearing we had had some visitors from our headquarters in Burlington Alabama. The only thing that impressed me about them was that they were very much Southern boys. A couple of them were very smart, but they fairly reeked of ambition. A few of them showed up to "help" us with inventory issues. They showed up before the "secret" machines started disappearing. In retrospect I know what happened was an inside job. But I was idealistic.
Soon after a whole team showed up. They were there to "help" with the missing machines. After a short time, one day Ray was ordered to take all the machines that were special order and wrap them with police tape. I asked him "why not put a camera on the machines." We thought this was like putting a target on the machines the thieves were after, but the orders came from the office. We knew they were loaded with specialized financial tracking software. Somebody wanted them. I told my boss he should put some security cameras pointing to the boxes and hide the cameras. He was ordered by the Inventory specialist a guy named "Max" not to. I go home. Next morning two more boxes were gone.
That became a pretext for firing everyone in charge, who happened to not be involved with the missing machines. My Manager Roy and his assistant were both cool guys who were dedicated, loyal and worked very hard. Roy Arnsmeier would work right alongside you and was like the energizer bunny. He took B12 shots that he credited for his energy. He managed multiple locations and was really good at his job. The two of them were out of town when all this was happening, yet for some reason the senior management fired them, and put these inventory specialists in charge of our branch.
"This Never Happened" – Buying the Company
Shortly after that they got investment money I was told came from either China or the Saudis, and bought out the company. Max became a wealthy guy. But what was funny is that as soon as they fired my rather innocent manager and his assistant, the boxes not only stopped disappearing but I was told by our Security Manager in very serious tones "This Never happened."
I can't prove this story ever occurred as I remember it, except I was a witness. It was curious that all this was occurring as a family known as the "Inslaws" were suing the Federal Government for stealing their software. The Promis Software the Inslaws sued about, was probably what was loaded on the machines that went missing. I'll never know who stole the machines, but it is probably whoever bought Burnham Services around the same time.
Suicided?
The investigator Danny Casolaro suicided in 1990 for investigating INSLAW. I understood the software developer also committed suicide, but I can only verify Danny's death. My involvement ended shortly after that when I quit and went looking for a job that had some future for me. That was the 80's. I pretty much have about 90% confidence that I know who really done it. Max Herring. The man is resting in peace now so it doesn't matter, but I'm pretty sure he was involved in something related to CIA/NSA with that incident. Don't know if those machines were going to NSA or somewhere else, but I suspect the thefts were an inside job, maybe even part of a larger deceptive plot. I only got to go to NSA once for that company, that was on a delivery. But spy spooks frighten me, (dead spooks don't) so I'm glad. Never did get a job there. I moved from near Savage to DC. Eventually moved into a tiny studio apartment.
1990's and CDSI
In the 1990's I got to interview for some IT jobs near NSA. I got in with a company that had a huge variety of computer work, CDSI. I ran their old mainframes, delivered stuff all over the place, and eventually started getting contract assignments. I literally started in the mailroom! When a contract ended, they'd find me a new one. I finally started getting into IT and they let me test programs and was prepared to become a programmer. Learned all the languages of the time: C, COBOL, Fortran, Java, and some of the old ones; PASCAL, ADA, PL/1, and most usefully I learned SQL. A select statement may have different syntax in MySQL versus Oracle, but the concepts are identical. I was finally doing my career finally. I was trained as a Tester and could write computer programs. A few times I got close to getting one, but never did get a job at NSA.
Did work for a Navy Contract. As a tester I got to work on pay and personnel subjects. Also some security subjects. NSA is the go to source if you want to understand cryptology, encoding and the rules for cyber-security. I learned a lot from the Navy, mostly from NSA or DISA sources. But I didn't have that top secret clearance, and it was a struggle to get the majority of the jobs. NSA was expanding in the 1990's. The Security establishment doesn't care whose president, just so long as they can be left alone to "protect" Americans from "enemies" "foreign and domestic." NSA wasn't supposed to be spying on people in the United States. But we also had that 5 eyes thing. I was told we did intelligence sharing and our friends shared critical information about our people with us. It's easy to get a warrant for watching a genuine spy. And it's easy for a whistleblower or dissident to get labeled as a spy. A lady in my Apartment complex claimed she was arrested and tried by a secret court in Virginia. She didn't tell me what she was arrested for and I figured she was nuts. Secret courts in the USA? What's that? Shouldn't that be all over the news? I worked that company until 2000.
2000's,
In 2000 or so I got a job at BLS. We had a Secret Service Office right over head whose whole job was to make sure that none of us invested in anything or misused our advance knowledge of employment and economic data. I had advance notice I was being spied on, and it didn't bother me. I learned all about Databases, got to do some minor scripting and testing, but mostly maintained several databases and released employment information to the Public on a tight schedule. We were always within a second of release time. Never one second early, and rarely more than a second or two late. By being perfect I made the job look easy. They had hired me in case anything went wrong. As a contractor I'd be easy to fire should there be an early release or a breach. I could have been fired for someone elses malfeasance I found out later. We had one breach due to cell phone use down in the Reporter's area. We left all our records out and went to lunch, and when we came back we were fine and the miscreant identified. That is prophylactic security, and I'm fine with that -- no need for a scapegoat like me.
After I left that job I became an Requirements and process maven, and learned about information architecture, acquisitions and related laws. Since contracting is impermanent I was always looking for another position after each contract got to end. So I've applied to NSA several times, and been around some of their IT projects. I can pretty much verify that most of what is going on is based on cool technology being used to get information to go after terrorists. I also know that NSA has had the ability to spy on anyone it wants and has had that technology for most of it's history. In the right hands this is benign. In the wrong hands this is 1984. I'm worried. Not about Obama, but all the enthusiastic prosecutors waiting in the wings. It's they who have criminalized whistle-blowing and real dissent. I got to work with military medical IT and that was cool. The irony is, there I was pushing for better security. The medical folks are supposed to protect Personally Identifiable Information, and that requires that people only have need to know access limited to their area of concern and not only their clearance. There are ways to filter information so that people see what they are supposed to see. Better security means security that respects privacy rights, prevents unauthorized access, and defines unauthorized access to include sketchy access from corrupt officers. I was always puzzled by hard it was to get standards adopted.
Summary
Fact is good security is compatible with Democracy, but it involves letting the people watch the watchers and requiring all the evidence on the table. The day when "sources and methods" was a legitimate secret, probably should be over. I found out that the entire world operates security in similar manners. Some do it better than us (the Israelis), some more brutally (The Russians), some idiosyncratically (the Chinese). Bad Security is tyranny. Good security is simply boundary enforcement -- which is the heart of all people's rights.
There are lots of jobs in the spy business if you already have a clearance; mostly for people who know how to use and access a database, or search data. Meta Data has become an important business, and the ability to data mine personal information has become important to marketing, finance, as well as to law enforcement and the spook business. These cats are out of the bag and can't be put back. But we can put some strict controls on the acquisition and use of data. It is not legitimate property of companies or third parties. It is our personal data and therefore our personal property by right, and therefore someone taking ownership of it who is not trustworthy by us is a violation of public trust and usurpation. Once we understand that the real issues start to be clear. I've lived with NSA all my life. NSA never has scared me. It's those sketchy people who use their power for personal benefit who scare me.
Thanks to 9/11 the pretend wall between NSA spying outside USA and inside has vanished. I follow NSA in the news. Stories like how they started storing info from the internet even before the internet was commercialized, how they can store conversations from every phone on earth. More stuff that I couldn't share if I knew. Oh yes, it's an organization to be scared of. And NSA capabilities have a tendancy to become private powers. I run into folks who've spent time in jail because the NSA believed they had disrespected it; not even broken a real law. 30 years ago A Guy like Edward Snow never would have made it to Hong Kong and there was no NSA and there would have been no Edward Snow after he tried to leak that information. Oh yes, they can be very scary folks. Never did get a job there, probably never will. I'm telling this story because I've finally giving up on the prospect. Seriously, NSA you still can shut me up easy. Hire me. I'm not a tattle tale.
Written 6/14/2013, updated a little in 2019
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