The National Security Agency has one main priority, the protection analysis of communications, both domestic and foreign , that pose a threat to the United states of America. The NSA would be unable to do their job if they weren’t able to tap into communications that
the NSA developed the Data Encryption Standard (DES) weak enough to be broken by them using means that were well wicould lead to a legitimate threat to the US. In order to do their job most effectively and not waste manpower developing new ways to break codes,within their grasp. In deliberately weakening the DES, the NSA left businesses and personal messages with a standard that wasn’t as strong as it could possibly though it was strong enough to keep their secrets relatively private. The senders of the messages that used the DES were generally angry that they couldn’t have more secure encryption that had been created already, but the NSA was justified in keeping the security of the DES at a lower level the possible. In doing this, the NSA made it more difficult more threats against the US to develop within the US, which is the biggest threat to the security. While foreign attacks on the US are a more likely possibility, it is the home grown attacks that prove the most dangerous because security within the US is relatively weak in comparison to the security of getting into the US. Home grown attacks also more difficult to detect because there are a larger number of people that could be in on a plot and the members of a plot might be more diverse and harder to track. The solution to home grown attacks would be to either make it easier to identify attackers or make attackers jobs more difficult by increasing security; increasing security would first of all be a logistical nightmare because of the size of the US and secondly it would also cause mass protests amongst the US population who already despise the relatively simple security measures of airport security. Because of that, the NSA had to go with solution b and make it easier to identify attackers by making their communications open to the NSA if they ever become suspicious, while allowing the NSA to focus more time on investigating foreign communications.

Image: “Elderly Armenian Woman Guards Home” by United Nations Photos, Flickr(CC)