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Books : The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence OrganizationIn association with Amazon.comby: James Bamford  List Price: $17.00 Amazon.com's Price: $11.56 You Save: $5.44 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 327.1206073 EAN: 9780140067484 ISBN: 0140067485 Label: Penguin (Non-Classics) Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 656 Publication Date: September 29, 1983 Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics) Sales Rank: 85134 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: In 1947, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand signed a secret treaty in which they agreed to cooperate in matters of signals intelligence. In effect, the governments agreed to pool their geographic and technological assets in order to listen in on the electronic communications of China, the Soviet Union, and other Cold War bad guys--all in the interest of truth, justice, and the American Way, naturally. The thing is, the system apparently catches everything. Government security services, led by the U.S. National Security Agency, screen a large part (and perhaps all) of the voice and data traffic that flows over the global communications network. Fifty years later, the European Union is investigating possible violations of its citizens' privacy rights by the NSA, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public advocacy group, has filed suit against the NSA, alleging that the organization has illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Being a super-secret spy agency and all, it's tough to get a handle on what's really going on at the NSA. However, James Bamford has done great work in documenting the agency's origins and Cold War exploits in The Puzzle Palace. Beginning with the earliest days of cryptography (code-making and code-breaking are large parts of the NSA's mission), Bamford explains how the agency's predecessors helped win World War II by breaking the German Enigma machine and defeating the Japanese Purple cipher. He also documents signals intelligence technology, ranging from the usual collection of spy satellites to a great big antenna in the West Virginia woods that listened to radio signals as they bounced back from the surface of the moon. Bamford backs his serious historical and technical material (this is a carefully researched work of nonfiction) with warnings about how easily the NSA's technology could work against the democracies of the world. Bamford quotes U.S. Senator Frank Church: "If this government ever became a tyranny ... the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government ... is within the reach of the government to know." This is scary stuff. --David Wall Average Rating:
 Rating:  - National Security Agency 101 - What is NSA? This book will tell youThis book is a must-purchase for anyone with a desire to see the "real" National Security Agency. This book has its flaws, as does the Agency, but it is the closest an outsider will come to understanding what NSA does, aside from sitting console in an ops center. Bamford's NSA Trilogy (PP, Body of Secrets, Shadow Factory) is an amazing amount of information on America's most secretive intelligence organization. If you're looking for the NSA mentioned in "enemy of the state" or "the x ... Read More Rating: - Groundbreaking and Definitive Public Look at the NSA - National Security Agency When this book came out (actually even before it came out), it caused a major stir within the secret world of eavesdropping and signals intelligence (SIGINT), and the cryptanalysis world. A thorough study of the National Security Agency (NSA) and its activities, at a time when not many people even knew of the existence of the agency or what it did or how it did it. The book shows how the U.S. government intercepted and decoding/decyphered radio and other transmissions of ... Read More Rating: - James Bamford's Puzzle PalaceThis was an interesting beginning book about the history and background of the National Security Agency, especially in light of the very damaging leak about the secret surveillance program ordered by President George W. Bush. The only problem is that this book is a bit dated, so it's hard to know how similar the early '80s Puzzle Palace compares with that of the early 21st Century NSA. What's clear is the NSA has been a special creature of the government, created by executive order and really not ... Read More Rating: - Timeless non-fictionThis book was written back in 1982, but the information you get from it is still fresh and very relevant. Especially, after the revelation that President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans and others in the United States making contact with persons in other nations. More recently, "USA Today" reported that the NSA is operating "the largest database ever assembled in the world", containing call detail records of all calls (inbound and outbound) placed through ... Read More Rating: - Dateline, America, Dec. 19, 2005The recent revelation that President Bush authorized NSA spying on its own citizens (and the sad fact that the New York Times sat on this for a year, despite being a victim itself in the past) makes this book both incredibly timely and obviously, unfortunately, timeless. The history of the National Security Agency and its predecessor organizations, along with the NSA's willingness to skirt, if not break, the law, should all be lessons for us today. For people younger than myself, not old enough ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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