NSA indexes

www.schneier.com...

www.thememoryhole.org...

Great find, Krif!

This is interesting stuff, but I still want to actually read the article. The title is intriguing, although I'm sure those papers are a theorhetical exercise.

This index on the surface seems to confirm some suspicions members have had about certain government projects. Here's a few more interesting items.

Well..all of the titles seem to relate to the SETI program. And they are good research subjects. For instance, a big question in the (active) SETI program is how can we transmit a message that everyone can read and understand, that is if it's of alien origin.

The Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence document is online here

Nothing shocking..

The point is that one of them is called "Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages" not "Key to Extraterrestrial Messages". The apperance of the word "the" in this phrase is strikingly important. To what specific messages are they referring?

[edit on 28-9-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Looks like we finally get to read:

Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages by H. Campaigne

and

Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Howard H. Campaigne!!

NOTE: There's no indicator as to whether or not this is an exercise or if it's the real deal. Either way it's a damned interesting read (assuming you're not afraid of math).

Nice find starred and flagged

reply to post by Xtraeme

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Re-reading both documents (Extraterrestrial Intelligence from NSA Technical Journal Vol. XI No. 2 pp. 101 and Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages from NSA Technical Journal Vol XIV, No. 1 pp. 13) I'm fairly certain this is an exercise from one of Dr. Lambros D. Callmahos's CA-400 senior cryptanalytic courses.

The first document Extraterrestrial Intelligence starts out with the title, author, and classification, or rather the lack of classification. The article is stamped, "Unclassified". Meaning that the document, even at it's initial release, could be read by anyone. No security clearance required.

That immediately tells me, "This is an exercise, a mind game, not a real comm."

Most people would recognize this as a puzzle, but the intro paragraph throws the first-time reader off because it appears to make a factual assertion. The editor (it doesn't seem like the author Howard H. Campaigne composed the introduction) writes,



It's shocking to read (1), because as far as 99.999999% of the population is concerned we're the only sentient creatures in the known universe. Leading the reader to think one of two things, either (a) they're talking about something real or (b) they're roleplaying for the purpose of this make-believe scenario. If it's (b), like most make-believe scenarios concocted for the purpose of a test (ie/ math problems on the SAT), we'd expect there to be some tell-tale signs that the scenario is fictitious.

Here are those tell tale signs:

1. Clause (2) of the introductory paragraph suggests that the author of the article is sending out these "comms," not to solve them, but to test the ingenuity of the engineers and researchers at the NSA. Think about that for a moment. Would the NSA really send out UFO communications in their technical journal, meaning to every single person on staff, simply to test the ingenuity of their employees? Unlikely.
   
   
2. Clause (3) of the introductory paragraph reads very much like, "Dr. PuzzleMaster has more mind-bending math goodness for your nerd solving pleasure!"
   
   
3. Next, on pp. 18 of Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages we read,
   
   
   The last two lessons 30 and 31 were not published with the first twenty-nine, because it made too long an exercise (4).
   
   
   
   Clause (4) is pretty much all the proof we need. These are lessons from some worksheet.
   
   
4. Finally, on pp. 20 of Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages we read,
   
   
   Looking back over the exercise (5) we see we have penetrated the meaning of the basic symbols, and even more important, have learned some of the syntax rules of the notation, and have caught mistakes in the process. We have a few words for sophisticated concepts, and, given more data, with a little labor we could establish its translation (6).
   
   
   
   Clause (5) suggests - yes - this is an exercise. Clause (6) suggests the purpose here isn't to come up with a key but to discuss how to go about solving the problem.