In this 17 May 2011 article from the internal newsletter SIDToday, the NSA Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Associate Deputy Director for Counterterrorism, Jon Darby, decribes how the NSA played a “critical” role in the raid in bon Laden’s Abbottabad compound: see the Intercept article What the Snowden Files Say About the Osama Bin Laden Raid, 18 […]

This 7 January 2008 post from NSA Menwith Hill Station’s internal Horizon newsletter describes the practice of piggybacking on other states’ computer network exploitation operations: see the Der Spiegel article The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle, 17 January 2015.

This 2005 post from the NSA’s internal newsletter SIDToday explains how the agency overcame the obfuscation of IMSI codes by mobile phone companies: see the Intercept article NSA Used Porn to “Break Down Detainees” in Iraq — and Other Revelations From 297 Snowden Documents, 1 March 2018.

This December 2005 post from the NSA’s internal newsletter SIDToday describes the agency’s efforts to recruit Arabic-language specialists; a Detroit-based recruitment effort “unearthed significant issues”: see the Intercept article NSA Used Porn to “Break Down Detainees” in Iraq — and Other Revelations From 297 Snowden Documents, 1 March 2018.

This post from the NSA’s internal newsletter SIDToday introduces a series on the agency’s struggle to find qualified language experts: see the Intercept article NSA Used Porn to “Break Down Detainees” in Iraq — and Other Revelations From 297 Snowden Documents, 1 March 2018.

This NSA presentation from March 2009 explains how agency analysts can exploit HTTP data through XKeyScore: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

Customer account managers record their knowledge about each customer in a customer relationship management database, which will be made available to everyone on NSAnet in the future. 

An order was signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that broadened the war on terrorism beyond its focus on Al Qaeda senior leadership, granting U.S Special Operations Command the authority to target the entire Al Qaeda network within or outside of the Afghanistan and Iraq battlefields. 

A Marine Expeditionary Force was “astounded” at reporting from Iraq’s signals intelligence agency, reports the chief of an NSA task force to rebuild the Iraqi agency. The Iraqi SIGINT Element, as the agency is known, recently was collecting over 5,000 calls per day with roughly 100 staff and “basic equipment.” Preparations were under way to give the agency the ability to intercept Global System Mobile phones and high-frequency communications.

This October 2005 article, taken from the internal NSA newsletter Foreign Affairs Digest, provides a brief history of the agency’s past and current relationship with its Turkish counterparts, which includes a staff of 40 NSA employees stationed in Ankara: see the Intercept article How the NSA Helped Turkey Kill Kurdish Rebels, 31 August 2014. Download […]

A reader agrees with the opinions of the senior military intelligence officer in Baghdad, and suggests that the military should capture the processes learned, as well as the lessons learned, to maintain continuity.

As the Signals Intelligence director embarks on at 12-day tour of the Central Command region, he writes from Baghdad about his pride in the signals intelligence enterprise.

The Menwith Hill Station takes a direct role in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, processing distress transmissions received from troops and sending them to rescue efforts. The station has successfully aided in the rescue of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and participates in CSAR trainings and simulations with U.K. Special Forces.

In the hunt for terrorists in Iraq, the "MASTERSHAKE" system uses detailed information on geolocation of modems installed in internet cafes, including the identification of a particular seat in some locations. The system has been used in more than 80 operations resulting in many arrests.

A brief description of a working group focused on monitoring and helping to exploit virtual private networks, or VPNs. Established in 2004, the working group publishes regular "VPN Target Activity Reports" on dozens of countries and organizations around the world. "These reports may help you exploit targets' VPNs more successfully," the chair of the working group writes.

The CIA-NSA Analysis Day brought 170 CIA analysts and leaders to the NSA for information exchange, and speakers and panels on information sharing and collaboration.

Back from deployment to Iraq, an NSA staffer recalls the feeling of accomplishment from the successful exploitation of phones seized as evidence in an overnight raid. The phones were used to identify detainees, including two “high-value targets” and “several lower-level facilitators.”

Five individuals received awards from the Crypto-Linguistic Association for supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Sudanese peace talks, investigations into the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and the CLA itself.

Three prototypes of a new signal discovery system, SIGINT T-VO, have been installed at bases in Baghdad. The system records radio frequency signals so that analysts can find and exploit previously undiscovered VHF/UF signals and analyze events like IED detonations to detect signals that might be related to anti-Iraqi forces communications.

The Special Collection Service site in Mosul intercepted and relayed three insurgent communications that helped to prevent an attack on a military convoy and aided the Army in the capture of 11 individuals.

A Data Acquisition Lead on a tour in Baghdad reflects on the positive encounters she has had with Iraqi civilians and the “display[s] of gratitude” she sees from Iraqi people every day. She feels that the U.S. presence in Iraq is necessary “not to save the face of the US” but to help “those Iraqis who are willing to give their lives to build a better nation.”

(Repost) SID Chief of Staff Charles Berlin discloses something startling: "As many of you know, our forces in Iraq are dropping bombs on the strength of SIGINT alone." He says this while sharing a story of a commander who was concerned about culpability for war crimes.

An intelligence analysis intern describes her tour as NSA counterterrorism representative at the CIA station in Islamabad, where she witnessed the arrests of several dozen terrorists.

There is a U.S. signals intelligence presence at the Royal Air Force base at Digby, in the Lincolnshire countryside, where the writer, an NSA civilian, reports that there will soon be three additional positions available.

Over 7,000 interrogation reports from Iraq are now searchable with access to the NSA's Pathfinder data set.

The Iraq Issue Management Team at NSA headquarters developed a support plan for the January 2005 election, which included an Iraq Elections Desk and web page and summaries of signals intelligence and relevant assessment, with sanitized SIGINT reporting shared with relevant non-SCI [sensitive compartmented information] cleared personnel.

The Signals Intelligence director spoke with five analysts who served in the field in Iraq to gather feedback about their experience and how to improve the entire SIGINT system to make it more effective.

Insurgents in Iraq triggered bombs using "cordless" phone systems that involved a base station and a number of associated wireless handsets. Target Exploitation operators discovered that they could plug a confiscated phone into a laptop's microphone jack, record a sound file, and use the recording to geolocate the base station. "As a result," SIDtoday reported, "a principal component in many [bombs] can now be targeted and hopefully, the... makers neutralized."

An overview of TRAFFICTHIEF, a service that connects several different collection systems, "from active, passive, and warranted SIGINT accesses via a central messaging service" to provide near real-time alerts about targets. It started in July 2003 as a prototype and has been deployed since February 2004. It "has helped enable the capture of several high-priority Counter-terrorism targets." There are several major enhancements that TRAFFICTHIEF could also do in the future, and the TRAFFICTHIEF team is hard at work making them a reality.

A staffer who returned from a tour in Baghdad describes how conditions have changed in the former palace where he worked inside the green zone.