[47812] in Cypherpunks
Re: NSA vacuuming down Internet traffic
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jim bell)
Tue Jan 23 22:14:09 1996
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 18:16:22 -0800
To: Rick Smith <smith@sctc.com>
From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
At 02:08 PM 1/23/96 -0600, Rick Smith wrote:
>>>...listening for Kissinger..
>
>> Don't tell me, let me guess: 20 years ago, if you had told anyone about
>> this project, you would have had to kill them. Now, 20 years later, after a
>> few levels of re-classifications and de-classifications, all you have to do
>> is to sneer in our general direction. <G>
>
>Not. It wasn't a classified project. It was upstairs from Woolworth's
>in Central Square, ferheavens sake. SCIFs would have annoyed the
>landlord, and presented interesting "challenges" given the pasteboard
>construction. We didn't even have any of those clunky file cabinets
>for Keeping Secrets Safe. We just amused ourselves with such
>speculation, since this was clearly a technology that excited interest
>in certain quarters.
>Rick.
I heard vague rumors of such capabilities about 20 years ago. At the time,
I had no reason to make overseas telephone calls, but if I did I would have
interspersed the friendly conversation with terms like
"Plutonium...Khadafi...Khomeini...football...uranium..."
