American spying Getting an earful

摘要

It is known in Washington, dc as No Such Agency and has neither the glamour nor the notoriety of the cia. But the National Security Agency (nsa) has far more people, more money and, so it is widely believed, more success. In the jargon of the trade, humint (human intelligence) is considered less reliable than comint (communications intelligence) or elint (electronic intelligence). Using tens of thousands of employees, acres of state-of-the-art computers, and dozens of spy satellites and listening posts, the nsa extracts information from codes, communications and electronic transmissions.