NSA gives insight into its old internal magazine Cryptolog

The National Security Agency, an American intelligence agency, does not allow outsiders to take a peek behind the scenes, but the service now makes an exception for the old internal magazine Cryptolog. All editions of the magazine have been put online.

National Security Archive writes that it is a complete index of all 1504 editions of the technical, internal NSA magazine. In 2013, 136 magazines were already put online; these editions were released between 1974 and 1997. However, the All Things D website at the time reported that significant parts of the editions released in 2013 were still censored. The latter also applies to a certain extent to all currently released editions, in which, for example, the names of analysts and authors are masked with white areas.

The magazine is officially called Cryptolog: The Journal of Technical Health and in the early years was mainly about cryptography and linguistics, although in a 1977 article the question was already asked what an information research analyst is and whether the NSA did not do enough with data science. The following year, the security of data was discussed, after which in the 1980s it was about intelligence work in the computer age. These topics give a fair idea of ​​how much the NSA has changed over the years.

Incidentally, the magazine did not only have room for serious, scientific articles and substantive material. Readers were also able to read about conflicts between linguists and cryptoanalysts, including promotions and salary levels. There was also room for bloopers and puzzles.