From: Dan Harmon <harmon@tenet.edu>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 94 22:21:38 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: NSA technology transfer
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9406140012.E12805-0100000@Joyce-Perkins.tenet.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



The following was posted on the list in the middle of May.  Being 
curious I called the number list at Ft. Meade. The person on who answered
was real shaken, for lack of a better term, that I called, it seems that 
this was the second inquiry that day.  He wanted to know various things, like
where did I get the information, was my name Bruce....  After a few minutes
he finally took my name and said, to call him in a week to 10 days if I 
did not here from him.  A few day later he called and said I needed to 
send a letter to expressing my interest in the technology.  About 10 ten days
after that I called to inquire if he received my letter and what was the 
next step.  It seems that there had been quite a few requests and that they were
trying to determine whether or not they were going to allow the 
technology to be transferred to individuals. The person said to call back  
in 4 or 5 days.  I called today and they said in essence that they 
were not going to let individuals have a shot at it.  They said that they 
were going to charge stiff license fees, that you would need to show a 
plan of how you were going to develop the product.....  You get the 
point.

It is obvious that they really don't want to transfer the technology.  And if
they do it will be to someone with deep pockets and who they like.

I wonder where the fees that they want to charge will go, to the 
general treasury or to their own budget? 

More later.

Dan Harmon

On Thu, 19 May 1994, Anonymous wrote:

> 
> 
> Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security,alt.privacy
> From: schneier@chinet.chinet.com (Bruce Schneier)
> Subject: "Interesting Stuff" Checkers at the NSA
> Message-ID: <Cq2934.q0@chinet.chinet.com>
> Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
> Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 17:40:15 GMT
> 
> This is from a flyer that NSA people have been distributing:
> 
>      NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY --  TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
> 
>      Information Sorting and Retrieval by Language or Topic
> 
>      Description:  This technique is an extremely simple, fast,
>      completely general mathod of sorting and retrieving machine-
>      readable text according to language and/or topic.  The
>      method is totally independent of the particular languages or
>      topics of interest, and relies for guidance solely upon
>      exemplars (e.g., existing documents, fragments, etc.)
>      provided by the user.  It employs no dictionaries keywords,
>      stoplists, stemmings, syntax, semantics, or grammar;
>      nevertheless, it is capable of distinguishing among closely
>      related toopics (previously considered inseparable) in any
>      language, and it can do so even in text containing a great
>      many errors (typically 10 - 15% of all characters).  The
>      technique can be quickly implemented in software on any
>      computer system, from microprocessor to supercomputer, and
>      can easily be implemented in inexpensive hardware as well. 
>      It is directly scalable to very large data sets (millions of
>      documents).
> 
>      Commercial Application:
> 
>           Language and topic-independent sorting and retieval of
>           documents satisfying dynamic criteria defined only by
>           existing documents.
> 
>           Clustering of topically related documents, with no
>           prior knowledge of the languages or topics that may be
>           present.  It desired, this activity can automatically
>           generate document selectors.
> 
>           Specializing sorting tasks, such as identification of
>           duuplicate or near-duplicate documents in a large set.
> 
>      National Security Agency
>      Research and Technology Group - R
>      Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA)
>      9800 Savage Road
>      Fort George G. Meade, MD  20755-6000
>      (301) 688-0606
> 
> 
> If this is the stuff they're giving out to the public, I can only
> imagine what they're keeping for themselves.
> 
> Bruce
> 
> **************************************************************************
> * Bruce Schneier
> * Counterpane Systems         For a good prime, call 391581 * 2^216193 - 1
> * schneier@chinet.com
> **************************************************************************
> 
>