This is primarily a travel blog in which I write about traveling in our motorhome. Our travels have

Nacogdoches, TX, United States
I began this blog as a vehicle for reporting on a 47-day trip made by my wife and me in our motorhome down to the Yucatan Peninsula and back. I continued writing about our post-Yucatan travels and gradually began including non-travel related topics. I often rant about things that piss me off, such as gun violence, fracking, healthcare, education, and anything else that pushes my button. I have a photography gallery on my Smugmug site (http://rbmartiniv.smugmug.com).

Monday, February 3, 2014

"Trust Me!"

I will probably regret writing this once the black helicopters begin hovering over my house and my communications are cut. But, all of this stuff is on the NSA’s website so I assume it’s safe to talk about.

I was searching the Internet for information about wired home networks and one of the hits provided by Google was “NSA Best Practices for Keeping Your Home Network Secure.” It sounded like the fox guarding the hen house story. I couldn’t help but take a look, what with all the recent hoopla over the NSA. The 8-page PDF document is a public information bulletin from the NSA Information Assurance Directorate (whose motto is “Confidence in Cyberspace”). It's purpose is to assist the public in securing their home networks from “cyber adversaries.” The document includes recommendations for personal computing devices, networks, home entertainment devices, and Internet behavior.  The document is current (June 2013) and does offer some good suggestions.

Seeing this document only peaked my curiosity. What other documents does the NSA make available to the public?  In addition to a multitude of cyber-system and network documents, there are thousands of documents that are 25 years or older and have been permanently declassified. These are mostly pre-WWI up into the 1960’s.

Check it out at http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/index.shtml. You’ll find subjects such as European Axis Signals Intelligence in WWII, Gulf of Tonkin, Cuban Missile Crisis, UFO’s, the Kennedy Assassination, the Vietnam War, a Cold War shoot down by Soviet Migs of US reconnaissance flight 60528, and a lot more. There is a lot of history here. I’m still browsing the site. I may as well see all I can see as long as they are watching me now.

2 comments :

Croft said...

Getting anti-cyber attack information fro NSA must be similar to getting anti-pickpocketing advice from The Artful Dodger!

Thank you for tying up my foreseeable future digging into that website!

Robert & Carol Ann Martin said...

Don't worry, they don't spy on US citizens. Oh, that's right. You're Canadian.