History Looks at the NSA
One reason, long cited by agency officials: Encryption. The show's producers obligingly included stock footage of Saddam Hussein, saying that the dictator-for-life has been spotted chatting on a 900-channel encrypted cell phone.
That's no surprise. The NSA, as Steven Levy documents in his new Crypto book (which the documentary overlooks), has spent the last 30 years trying to suppress data-scrambling technology through export regulations, court battles, and even personal threats.
The link for this article located at Wired.com is no longer available.