Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages

From Bruce Schnier's Cryptogram. I've done some contract work for the NSA as part of what we were working on at CertCo, but I never got access to Crypto Quarterly.

Indexes to NSA Publications Declassified and Online



In May 2003, Michael Ravnitzky submitted a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request to the National Security Agency for a copy of the index
to their historical reports at the Center for Cryptologic History and
the index to certain journals: the NSA Technical Journal and the
Cryptographic Quarterly. These journals had been mentioned in the
literature but are not available to the public. Because he thought NSA
might be reluctant to release the bibliographic indexes, he also asked
for the table of contents to each issue.

The request took more than three years for them to process and
declassify -- sadly, not atypical -- and during the process they asked
if he would accept the indexes in lieu of the tables of contents pages:
specifically, the cumulative indices that included all the previous
material in the earlier indices. He agreed, and got them last month.
The results are online.

This is just a sampling of some of the article titles from the NSA
Technical Journal: "The Arithmetic of a Generation Principle for an
Electronic Key Generator" - "CATNIP: Computer Analysis - Target Networks
Intercept Probability" - "Chatter Patterns: A Last Resort" - "COMINT
Satellites - A Space Problem" - "Computers and Advanced Weapons Systems"
- "Coupon Collecting and Cryptology" - "Cranks, Nuts, and Screwballs" -
"A Cryptologic Fairy Tale" - "Don't Be Too Smart" - "Earliest
Applications of the Computer at NSA" - "Emergency Destruction of
Documents" - "Extraterrestrial Intelligence" - "The Fallacy of the
One-Time-Pad Excuse" - "GEE WHIZZER" - "The Gweeks Had a Gwoup for It" -
"How to Visualize a Matrix" - "Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages" -
"A Mechanical Treatment of Fibonacci Sequences" - "Q.E.D.- 2 Hours, 41
Minutes" - "SlGINT Implications of Military Oceanography" - "Some
Problems and Techniques in Bookbreaking" - "Upgrading Selected US Codes
and Ciphers with a Cover and Deception Capability" - "Weather: Its Role
in Communications Intelligence" - "Worldwide Language Problems at NSA"

In the materials the NSA provided, they also included indices to two
other publications: Cryptologic Spectrum and Cryptologic Almanac.

The indices to Cryptologic Quarterly and NSA Technical Journal have
indices by title, author, and keyword. The index to Cryptologic Spectrum
has indices by author, title, and issue.

Consider these bibliographic tools as stepping stones. If you want an
article, send a FOIA request for it. Send a FOIA request for a dozen.
There's a lot of stuff here that would help elucidate the early history
of the agency and some interesting cryptographic topics.

Thanks, Mike, for doing this work.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/nsa/bibs.htm

In reality, I suspect the NSA salted the list. It's what I would have done in their position.


FTR: I shot my resume over to them. You know, just in case...