The Pizzazzy

Just finished reading this interesting novel by Dan Brown : Digital Fortress. This is the third book of Dan Brown that I have read, the other two are The Da Vinci Code, and Angels and Demons. And just like the previous two books I enjoyed, this one is also a thoroughly gripping plot. Well researched and intelligently narrated, each page presents a new level of excitement. The book is about digital code breaking and super computers on the battle of privacy and security.

After reading the book I read everything else on the pages of the book like acknowledgement, publishing details and  one of the pages mentions about www.danbrown.com I checked it out and came across some interesting and bizzarre facts about the book. First of all was that it is based on a real life experience. Read on..

In the Spring of 1995, on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, the U.S. Secret Service made a bust…

THE TARGET : A teenage student flagged by a government computer as being a threat to national security.

THE CRIME : Sending E-mail to a friend in which he said he thought President Clinton should be shot.

THE MISTAKE : The same mistake many Americans make every day…believing that what they say in E-mail is private.

In the wake of the incident, Dan Brown, an English teacher at the school, surprised by the government’s apparent ability to “listen in”, began researching the intelligence community’s access to civilian communication. What he stumbled across stunned him…an ultra-secret, $12 billion a year intelligence agency that only 3% of Americans know exists.

This clandestine organization, known as the NSA (jokingly referred to as No Such Agency), employs over 20,000 code-breakers, analysts, technicians, and spies and has a 86-acre compound hidden in Maryland. Founded over half a century ago by President Truman, the NSA’s technology is unrivaled. They have the ability to monitor all of our digital communications–cellular phone, FAX, and E-mail. They are bound by presidential directive to do whatever it takes to protect our national security… including “snoop” our most private conversations if necessary.

Brown coaxed two ex-NSA cryptographers to speak to him via anonymous remailers (an E-mail protocol that ensures both parties privacy), and the cryptographers, each unaware of the other, told identical stories…incredible accounts of NSA submarines that listened in on underwater phone cables, of a terrorist attack on the New York Stock Exchange that never went public, and also of a chilling new NSA technology–a multi-billion dollar supercomputer capable of deciphering even the most secure communications. Nonetheless, the cryptographers sang the praises of the NSA and insisted that ensuring our nation’s security can only be done at the expense of civilian privacy.

“The battle between privacy and security,” says Brown, “has no clear-cut answers. The stakes are enormous. All I know is that when I learned the truth about the NSA, I had to write about it.”

DIGITAL FORTRESS
Only the most shocking parts are true.

Some bizzarre facts that we are all aware of but to read about it in numbers and details is what makes them more bizzarre.

In large cities, Americans are photographed on the average of 20 times a day.
Everything you charge is in a database that police, among others, can look at.
Supermarkets track what you purchase and sell the information to direct-mail marketing firms.
Your employer is allowed to read your E-Mail, and if you use your company’s health insurance to purchase drugs, your employer has access to that information.
Government computers scan your E-Mail for subversive language.
Your cell phone calls can be intercepted, and your access numbers can be cribbed by eavesdroppers with police scanners.
You register your whereabouts every time you use an ATM, credit card, or use EZ PASS at a toll booth.
You are often being watched when you visit web sites. Servers know what you’re looking at, what you download, and how long you stay on a page.
A political candidate found his career destroyed by a newspaper that published a list of all the videos he had ever rented.
Most “baby monitors” can be intercepted 100 feet outside the home.
Intelligence agencies now have “micro-bots” — tiny, remote control, electronic “bugs” that literally can fly into your home and look around without your noticing.
Anyone with $100 can tap your phone.
a new technology called TEMPEST can intercept what you are typing on your keypad (from 100 feet away through a cement wall.)
the National Security Agency has a submarine that can intercept and decipher digital communications from the RF emissions of underwater phone cables.