NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/sci/crypt/2911

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-15 | 1.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!ucbvax!HPLWK.HPL.HP.COM!albert
From: [e-mail] (Joseph Albert)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: translators at NSA
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Aug 92 04:26:32 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Lines: 23

[e-mail] writes:

> I noticed a full page advertisement recruiting for the National
> security agency in the American Translators Association bulletin.
> Why would the NSA want language types?  I thought they did alot
> number-crunching and your average translator has had little or
> no math background.  Also, don't they have a whole much of
> Defense Language School types who have been drilled in every
> language imaginable?  Is the NSA just fishing?  Are they desparate
> for talent or what?

Well, for one thing, they need people versed in various languages
to work on cracking encryption schemes used to encode information
gathered via intelligence operations. For example, if you were an expert
cryptographer, and were trying to break a cryptosystem used to encipher
Russian text, how would you know when you have obtained plausible
Russian prose unless you were fluent in Russian? I know someone who
is fluent in Polish who worked for the NSA in that capacity, that is
worked with a cryptographer. I suspect that the NSA hires *many*
such people.

Joseph Albert
[e-mail]