Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[John Young]

Peter Fairbrother asks several questions:

USSID's are regulations and procedures developed on the 
basis of law governing NSA. A principal law is the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. Presidential executive orders
also undergird the regulations. USSID 18 cites these.

I understand "cryptographic data" to mean any interceptions 
involving cryptology. This too is taken from USSID 18. Previous
public releases of USSID 18 censored cryptographic terms.
And one version released at about the same time (2000) still
censored those terms and other references to retention
of such data.

The CIA/NSA operates Special Collection Service (SCS,
not SIS as I stated), a program to burglarize facilities to obtain 
information that is otherwise protected against interception. 
If NSA cannot intercept or gain access to communications 
it notifies the CIA burglary team which surreptitiously gains 
physical access.

  http://www.fas.org/irp/facility/scs_cp.htm

  http://cryptome.org/cia-nsa-scs.htm

The jape was about whether SCS is forever running
behind more experienced professional burglars, such as
those of the Old World and Really Old World who 
allegedly sometime taunt the New Worlders with
spoof spook-thief devices which hide the good stuff.
One such being cryptology material and equipment.

Learning from the ancient burglars to hide tracks, loading 
global communications with spoof cryptographic
data, huge bandwidths of it, is underway, so birdie tweets.