Spy Agency Confirms Computer Outage

[William Knowles <erehwon () KIZMIAZ DIS ORG>]

WASHINGTON (AP) [1.29.2000] - The super-secret National Security
Agency confirmed Saturday night that it had a "serious computer
problem" last week that affected its ability to process intelligence
information.

The agency issued a brief statement a few hours after the outage was
reported by ABC News, which said its sources characterized the problem
as the biggest computer failure in the history of the NSA.

"This problem, which was contained to the NSA headquarters complex at
Fort Meade, Md., did not affect intelligence collection, but did
affect the processing of intelligence information," the agency
statement said. "NSA systems were impacted for 72 hours."

It said the outage started at 7 p.m. EST Monday and that the system
was restored on Thursday.

"There was no evidence of malice or no evidence of a Y2K problem,"
said an agency official who asked not to be identified by name.

"Contingency plans were immediately put into effect that called on
other aspects of the NSA system to assume some of the load," the
agency statement said. "While intelligence collection continued, NSA
technicians worked to recover the IT (information technology)
infrastructure. That backlog of intelligence processing is almost
complete and NSA is confident that no significant intelligence
information has been lost."

The statement said the agency "is currently operating within the
window of normal operations."

Until a few years ago, the National Security Agency was so secret
there was no public acknowledgment by the government of its existence
and employees could be disciplined for merely saying they worked
there.

It specializes in electronic intelligence gathering through
satellites, telephone intercepts and other methods.

The Defense Department acknowledged earlier this month that it made
mistakes in its pre-New Year's Eve testing of a Y2K correction for a
computer system that processes imagery from intelligence satellites.

The computer system broke down that night, interrupting the flow of by
satellite information for several hours.

However, the Pentagon insisted the trouble did not jeopardize U.S.
national security.


==
Some day, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be
an entry which reads, "Information"; for in most cases
the information is more valuable than the hardware which
processes it. -- Adm. Grace Murray Hopper, USN Ret.
==
http://www.dis.org/erehwon/

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