PARTNERS IN CRIME: TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

Transcription

1 PARTNERS IN CRIME: TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

2 1 Prologue Fuel for the rocket Our story begins in an unassuming brownstone in New York City. The year is 1919, and the brownstone is the headquarters of the American Black Chamber. The American Black Chamber was the colloquial name for Military Intelligence 8, a covert, peacetime, code-breaking bureau, founded on May 20, 1919, funded by the State Department and the War Department, and headed by Herbert Osborne Yardley (Bamford 1982). The mission of the Black Chamber was straightforward: We were to read the secret codes and cipher diplomatic telegrams of foreign governments by such means as we could (Yardley 1931). Decades later, historian James Bamford would liken Yardley s Black Chamber to a rocket so quick was its ascent (Bamford 1982). However, before Yardley and his team of cryptographers could start deciphering diplomatic telegrams, they had to overcome a hurdle: With the end of the first World War, cable censorship had also ended, and the Black Chamber no longer received any telegraphs from the Army. Consequently, they needed copies of the diplomatic telegrams to decipher; they needed fuel for the rocket (Yardley 1931). But how could they obtain these vital telegrams? This was the question that Yardley posed to his readers, in his sensational memoir, The American Black Chamber. Yardley, to the chagrin of the readers, left this question unanswered (Yardley 1931). This paper seeks to answer that question and many more besides. Thesis From the American Black Chamber to the Army Security Agency (ASA) to the National Security Agency (NSA), intelligence agencies have always relied on telecommunications

3 2 companies, such as Western Union, RCA Global, and AT&T, to aid and abet them. While these partnerships are now common knowledge, two questions which are two sides of the same coin remain unanswered, or at least unclear: 1. What methods of persuasion did the intelligence agencies use to convince the telecommunications companies to partner with them? 2. Why, despite the legal ramifications, the financial disincentive, and the danger of customer attrition, were the telecommunications companies persuaded? I will posit that all the intelligence agencies whether knowingly or unknowingly leveraged the same two psychological principles (and a few other, complementary methods of persuasion) to achieve the telecommunications companies cooperation. I will use the research of social psychologists Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch to frame the lens through which we will view the history of the telecommunications companies partnership with the intelligence agencies. Along the way, I will also build the legal framework necessary to fully understand these unusual partnerships. Part I The American Black Chamber An astute reader of Herbert Yardley s American Black Chamber might have surmised that Yardley solicited the help of telecommunications companies to obtain the much-needed diplomatic telegrams. This was indeed the case, and this section will outline Yardley s campaign to form these partnerships. The first method of persuasion used by Yardley was to appeal to patriotism and nationalistic feelings. The first World War had just ended, and the specter of war still hovered in the air.

4 3 Consequently, [Yardley] himself approached, or had a State Department official approach, high officers of the cable companies with a frank statement of what he wanted (Kahn 2004). The reaction of the companies varied. W.E. Roosevelt of the All-America Cable Company declared, The government can have anything it wants (Kahn 2004). However, the heads of the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Postal Telegraph Company were more reluctant to acquiesce (Kahn 2004). Why did the heads of Western Union and Postal Telegraph hesitate? To understand their hesitation, we must turn to the legal framework of the time. As mentioned before, cable censorship in the United States had ended after the first World War, in early Furthermore, the Radio Communication Act of 1912 was reinstated (Bamford 1982). This act stated: No person or persons engaged in or having knowledge of the operations of any station or stations shall divulge or publish the contents of any messages transmitted or received by such station, except to the person or persons to whom the same may be directed, or their authorized agent, or to another station employed to forward such message to its destination, unless legally required to do so by the court of competent jurisdiction or other competent authority (Bamford 1982). To put it succinctly, it was illegal for the telecommunications companies to hand over the telegrams to the Black Chamber. This then was the hurdle that Yardley had to overcome. However, the Radio Communication Act had a helpful clause it allowed for the sharing of telegrams with a competent authority. Couldn t Yardley have invoked this clause? After all, the Black Chamber was sanctioned by the government. This is where we come to the crux of the matter: While the Black Chamber was a governmental agency, the government wanted to distance itself from the Black Chamber for deniability. Consequently, the rent, telephone, lights, heat, office supplies everything was paid for secretly so that no connection could be traced to

5 4 the government (Yardley 1931). Given the cloak-and-dagger nature of the operation, Yardley could hardly invoke the authority clause of the Radio Communication Act. However, authority is a nebulous concept. And legal authority is only one form of authority; sometimes a mere lab coat can be a form of authority. To better understand authority and obedience to authority, we must travel to a Yale University lab room, where an interesting experiment is about to take place. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, is best known for his obedience to authority experiments. The basic experiment is simple: In the basic experimental design, two people come to a psychology laboratory to take part in a study of memory and learning. One of them is designated as a teacher and the other a learner. The experimenter explains that the study is concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The learner is conducted into a room, seated in a kind of miniature electric chair; his arms are strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode is attached to his wrist. He is told that he will be read lists of simple word pairs, and that he will then be tested on his ability to remember the second word of a pair when he hears the first one again. Whenever he makes an error, he will receive electric shocks of increasing intensity. The real focus of the experiment is the teacher. After watching the learner being strapped into place, he is seated before an impressive shock generator. The instrument panel consists of thirty lever switches set in a horizontal line. Each switch is clearly labeled with a voltage designation from 15 to 450 volts (Milgram 1973). While the experiment is easy to understand, Milgram s findings are harder to understand. Most people when told about the experimental setup conclude that few teachers will continue to shock the learner beyond a certain voltage that would be inhumane. However, Milgram s findings were the opposite. In the initial experiment, which used Yale undergraduates as subjects 1 (the teachers), the full-obedience rate was about 60 percent. When the experiment was repeated 1 Full-obedience, in this context, means that the teacher continued to give shocks to the learner up to the maximum voltage of 450 volts.

6 5 with professionals, white-collar workers, unemployed persons, and industrial workers, the experimental outcome was the same (Milgram 1973). Finally, when others reconstructed Milgram s experiments in Princeton, Munich, Rome, South Africa, and Australia, the level of obedience was invariably somewhat higher than found in the investigation reported [previously] (Milgram 1973). It is also worth noting that [the experimenter in Milgram s experiments] had almost none of the tools used in ordinary command structures. For example, the experimenter did not threaten the subjects with punishment such as loss of income, community ostracism, or jail for failure to obey. Neither could he offer incentives Despite these limitations, he still managed to command a dismaying degree of obedience (Milgram 1973). Consequently, Milgram s experimenter is the perfect image to invoke when discussing Yardley s attempts to persuade the Western Union and Postal Telegraph companies. Yardley, like the experimenter but unlike later intelligence agencies agents, had no carrots or sticks to reward or punish the telecommunications companies. Further, he didn t even have any of the implicit authority of the experimenter. But he had access to someone who did: General Marlborough Churchill, Director of the Military Intelligence branch of the Army. For six months, the State Department had been unable to convince the heads of Western Union and Postal Telegraph to cooperate with the Black Chamber because the Radio Communication Act provided harsh penalties for any employee of a telegraph company who divulged the contents of a message (Bamford 1982). Then Yardley who intuitively understood the human tendency to obey authority years before Milgram s experiments suggested to General Churchill that he personally visit Western Union s president, Newcomb Carlton. The

7 6 meeting was arranged in September, and Churchill, accompanied by Yardley, raised with President Carlton the delicate matter of his secretly supplying the Chamber, in total violation of the law, copies of all necessary telegrams. After the men had put all our cards on the table, Yardley would later write, President Carlton seemed anxious to do everything that he could for us (Bamford 1982). General Churchill also contacted the head of the Postal Telegraph company and secured his cooperation as well. As mentioned before, the All-America Cable Company had already agreed to supply the Black Chamber with telegrams though it is worth mentioning here that in addition to patriotism, W.E. Roosevelt, the president of the company, was, doubtless, also motivated by an obedience to authority. Recall that he said, The government can have anything it wants [emphasis mine] (Kahn 2004), even though the Black Chamber was supposed to be a covert operation distanced from the government. The Black Chamber now had access to diplomatic telegrams from all three major cable companies. Thus, Yardley relied on nationalistic feelings and obedience to authority to secure the necessary cooperation of the telecommunications companies. Part II The SHAMROCK program The NSA s SHAMROCK program began at the end of the second World War. The Army wanted to continue its arrangement of cable censorship with the telecommunications companies: 2 On August 18, 1945, two representatives of the Army Security Agency were sent to New York to make the necessary contacts with the heads of the Commercial Communications Companies in New York [and] secure their approval of the interception of all Governmental traffic entering 2 The ASA was a subordinate agency of the NSA.

8 7 the United States, leaving the United States, or transiting the United States (Final Report 1976). The ASA representatives again cited national security and appealed to patriotism. (They were also, doubtless, assisted by their implied authority and the obedience to authority effect.) The representatives were met with varied responses. The vice-president of the Western Union Telegraph Company and the president of the RCA Global company agreed to cooperate unless the Attorney General of the United States deemed the intercepts illegal (Final Report 1976). However, when the ASA representatives approached an official at ITT [Communications], he very definitely and finally refused to agree to any of the Army proposals (Final Report 1976). Again, to understand ITT s vehement refusal, we need to understand the legal framework of the time. First, let us examine the implications of a telecommunications company handing over telegrams vis-à-vis the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: Obtaining the international telegrams of American citizens by NSA at the offices of the telegraph companies appears to violate the privacy of these citizens, as protected by the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment guarantees to the people the right to be secure in their papers against unreasonable searches and seizures. It also provides that no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause. In no case did NSA obtain a search warrant prior to obtaining a telegram (Final Report 1976). There was also another law that applied: Section 605 of the Communications Act. This law was enacted in 1934, 11 years before the SHAMROCK program was initiated. Section 605 of the Communications Act stated: No person, receiving, assisting in receiving, transmitting, or assisting in transmitting, any interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substances, purport, effect, or meaning thereof (Final Report 1976).

9 8 This law was amended in 1968 by the addition of the phrase: Except as authorized by chapter 119, Title 18, no person (Final Report 1976). And the relevant provision in chapter 119, section 2511 (3), [provided] that nothing contained in this chapter or in section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934 shall limit the constitutional power of the President to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States (Final Report 1976). While this provision seemed to legitimize the ASA s request for copies of telegrams in the name of national security, the legal interpretation was more complicated. The Supreme Court in the Keith decision (1972), held that this section confers no power and merely provides that the Act shall not be interpreted to limit or disturb such power as the President may have under the Constitution (Final Report 1976). So, it would appear that where such telegrams [were] intercepted for other than foreign intelligence purposes (e.g. the watch list activity), section 605 [was] violated (Final Report 1976). With the legal framework now in place, we can return to ITT s refusal to assist the ASA. Stanley Milgram tried several variants of his obedience to authority experiments and in one of his experiments the conflicting authority variation two experimenters of equal status, both sitting at the same desk, gave conflicting orders. The result was that no shocks were delivered past the point of their disagreement (Milgram 1973). Conflicting authority severely paralyzes action, Milgram concluded. While the ASA representatives had far more authority than Herbert Yardley the ASA was openly government-sanctioned they were asking the telecommunications companies to violate a constitutional law. This conflicting authority effect caused the ITT official to refuse.

10 9 However, the ASA representatives did not give in easily. They still had another powerful psychological method of persuasion at their disposal: social proof. The concept of social proof is intuitive, but it was psychologist Solomon Asch who formally demonstrated it. The experimental set up Asch used was as follows: Groups of seven to nine people were seated in a classroom for a seemingly straightforward experiment of visual discrimination. They were instructed to match the length of a given line the standard with one of three other lines. One of the three comparisons was equal to the standard; the other two lines differed from the standard (and from each other) by considerable amounts (Asch 1956). The twist, of course, was that only one of the group was an actual subject; the rest were actors. The actors always went first, and they all chose one of the conspicuously wrong answers (Asch 1956). Often the subjects would yield, and rather than contradicting their peers, they would start answering incorrectly contradicting their own sensory perception (Asch 1956). When Western Union and RCA Global agreed to cooperate with the ASA, the Army representatives returned to ITT on August 21, 1945, and suggested to an ITT vice president that his company would not desire to be the only non-cooperative company on this project (Final Report 1976). It was a textbook execution of demonstration of social proof and it worked: The [ITT] vice president decided to reconsider and broached the matter the same day with the president of the company. The ITT president agreed to cooperate with the Army, provided that the Attorney General decided that the program was not illegal (Final Report 1976). Before we move on to our third and final case study, the STELLARWIND program, there are two important caveats to note. The first caveat requires a more detailed understanding of Milgram s obedience to authority experiment. Several years after his initial experiment, Milgram

11 10 came up with a cogent theory to explain the experiment. The theory stated that people in a social situation have two states of behavior: 1. The autonomous state : people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the consequences of those actions. 2. The agentic state : people allow others to direct their actions, and they then pass off the responsibility for the consequences of those actions to the person giving the orders. (Milgram 1975) Milgram posited that two conditions must be satisfied for a person to enter the agentic state: 1. The authority giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people s behavior that is, the authority must be seen as legitimate. 2. The person being ordered about believes that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens (Milgram 1975). Milgram had distilled this theory from the experiment itself: When the participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey; on the other hand, many participants who refused to go on initially, did so if the experimenter said that he would assume all responsibility (Milgram 1975). When we re-examine the SHAMROCK program from this nuanced lens, a commonality stands out. All three companies agreed to assist the ASA in SHAMROCK only if the Attorney General deemed the program legal (Final Report 1976). At first, to me, this just seemed like a legal nicety a suggestion made by the companies lawyers. However, I later realized that this was a symptom of a deeper psychological phenomenon: the transference of responsibility. The essence of obedience, Milgram wrote, is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument

12 11 for carrying out another person s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions (Milgram 1973). The company executives clearly wished to transfer their responsibility: [They] were apparently willing to ignore [their lawyers ] advice if they received assurances from the Attorney General that he would protect them from any consequences (Final Report 1976). However, this reassurance proved to be insufficient. Recall the first condition of entering the agentic state: The authority must be seen as legitimate. And the ultimate authority figure, in the United States, is the President. Consequently, the companies were demanding assurances in 1947 not only from the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, but also from the President that their participation was essential to the national interest and that they would not be subjected to prosecution in the Federal Courts (Final Report 1976). Defense Secretary Forrestal, who said he spoke for the President, gave them these assurances at a December 16, 1947 meeting in Washington D.C. (Final Report 1976). This completed the transition of the company executives from the autonomous state to the agentic state and the transference of responsibility. The second caveat concerns itself with the public explanation the telecommunications companies gave for their participation in SHAMROCK: Both the telegraph companies and [the] NSA [denied] that the companies ever received anything for their cooperation in SHAMROCK, whether in the form of compensation or favoritism from the Government. All [claimed] they were motivated by purely patriotic considerations (Final Report 1976). While appealing to patriotism is undoubtedly a valuable method of persuasion, I hope that by now it is clear that patriotism is not the only consideration. The companies constant demand of assurances from the

13 12 Attorney General and later the President; ITT Communication s initial refusal to participate in the program and later volte-face all show that intertwined psychological forces are at play. Part III The STELLARWIND program Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant (Cauley 2006). This warrantless wiretapping program later came to be known as STELLARWIND. This program, naturally, required the cooperation of the telecommunications companies. In an increasingly familiar pattern, the NSA sent representatives to all the major telecommunications companies to secure their cooperation. The initial method of persuasion used by the NSA representatives was, of course, an appeal to patriotism. The 9/11 attacks had shocked the entire country, and the public sentiment was that stronger measures were needed to stop terrorists. Consequently, soon after the September 11 attacks NSA representatives approached the nation s biggest telecommunications companies [and] made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks (Cauley 2006). Unsurprisingly, majority of the telecommunications companies executives agreed to help: AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth were onboard with the STELLARWIND program. However, there was one holdout: Qwest, a telecommunications company that served the Midwest. Qwest s refusal to cooperate seems strange: Whereas the American Black Chamber s eavesdropping program and the NSA s SHAMROCK program were illegal, the NSA s STELLARWIND program seemed legal after all, it was founded on an executive order by the

14 13 President himself. Unfortunately, matters were not as straightforward as that. The legal framework had been updated after the SHAMROCK fiasco, and there was a new set of laws and a new court in place to oversee electronic surveillance for national security purposes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. However, the FISA court had not approved indeed, was not aware of the STELLARWIND program, and according to sources familiar with the events, Qwest s CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA s assertion that Qwest didn t need a court order or approval under FISA to proceed (Cauley 2006). Recall Milgram s conflicting authority version of the obedience to authority experiment if an authority is undermined and not perceived as legitimate, a subject cannot enter the agentic state, and consequently, transference of responsibility cannot take place, often leaving the subject paralyzed. This was exactly the dilemma Qwest faced. To resolve this dilemma, Qwest tried to get the conflicting authorities to align: Qwest s lawyers asked [the] NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court (Cauley 2006). When the NSA refused, Qwest tried to get the Attorney General to sanction the program s legality, but the NSA rejected Qwest s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general s office (Cauley 2006). Faced with these conflicting laws and authorities, Qwest continued to holdout. There was another reason Qwest was holding out: financial incentive. Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies [were] prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers calling habits (Cauley 2006). And the financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that [had] been added to the law over the years, [could] be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation s top telecommunications regulatory agency, [could] levy fines of up to $130,000 per day

15 14 per violation with a cap of $1.325 million per violation (Cauley 2006). Sources close to Qwest s CEO confirmed that these financial implications were indeed also a concern (Cauley 2006). The NSA was aware of this financial incentive, and it provided a counteracting financial incentive: The NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the [companies ] cooperation (Cauley 2006). Not only did the NSA offer to pay companies for their participation, but also it threatened Qwest with loss of lucrative, future classified contracts: The agency suggested that Qwest s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more (Cauley 2006). Despite this financial incentive, Qwest still did not budge from its position. Finally, the NSA tried the last weapon in its persuasion arsenal: social proof. Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies (Cauley 2006). However, even this did not work, and even after Joe Nacchio was replaced as CEO, Qwest did not participate in the STELLARWIND program. Speak to the past and it shall teach thee I once saw an engraving on a library that read, Speak to the past and it shall teach thee. This was the sentiment in which I embarked on this paper: What could the patterns of the past tell us about the present and predict about the future? In the case of the partnership of telecommunications companies and intelligence agencies, some clear patterns have emerged. For instance, all intelligence agencies used the same methods of persuasion appeal to patriotism, obedience to authority, financial incentive, and social proof oftentimes together. These levers

16 15 of psychological persuasion seem absurdly simple almost obvious when thus clearly marked and labeled, yet they are deep-seated in the human psyche, and consequently, they are immensely powerful especially when used in conjunction. Another pattern that emerged was that all the telecommunications companies executives, once they had agreed to cooperate with the intelligence agencies, entered an agentic state: They no longer took responsibility for their actions. They transferred this responsibility to authority figures such as General Churchill, the Attorney General, or the President. The danger of this phenomenon of transference of responsibility cannot be overstated: The three surveillance programs discussed in this paper ranged from being outright illegal to borderline legal, and while allowing the government access to electronic messages may not normally be characterized as criminal or evil, Stanley Milgram was right when he said, After witnessing hundreds of ordinary persons submit to the authority in our own experiments, I must conclude that [Hannah] Arendt s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine (Milgram 1973). As history attests, unquestioning obedience to authority can lead to terrible crimes. The final pattern that emerged was that minimization of the conflicting authority effect by placing legal restrictions on electronic surveillance, paradoxically, benefits both civil liberties advocates and intelligence agencies. The civil liberties advocates benefit because there is judicial oversight to prevent abuses of power. The intelligence agencies benefit because it is far easier for them to secure the cooperation of telecommunications companies for electronic surveillance since both the law and the intelligence agencies implicit authority (as members of the executive branch) are aligned that is, there is no conflicting authority effect. This point is well

17 16 illustrated by comparing the difficulty the American Black Chamber with no explicit government sanction had in obtaining the telecommunications companies cooperation to the relatively-less difficulty the NSA s STELLARWIND program which had President Bush s sanction, though was contrary to the FISA regulations had in obtaining the same cooperation to the relative ease the NSA s most-recent Fairview program which was sanctioned by both law and the executive branch had in obtaining the same cooperation (Larson and Angwin 2015). Thus, legal strictures on electronic surveillance, contrary to common opinion, mutually benefit both civil liberties advocates and intelligence agencies. Epilogue Descent of the rocket Our story started with Herbert Yardley s Black Chamber, and it is only fitting that our story ends with the Black Chamber. When we had last seen Yardley, using clever persuasion techniques, he had managed to secure the cooperation of the major telegraph companies. However, by the mid to late 1920s, he was facing increasing resistance from the companies (Kahn 1996). Appealing to the companies executives patriotism was no longer working: In the United States, as the wartime spirit evaporated, American carriers grew less and less inclined to patriotically give Yardley cablegrams (Kahn 2004). There was also strong financial incentive not to give the Black Chamber the telegrams as revelation of the practice not only could invite prosecution; worse, it could hurt business (Kahn 2004). Furthermore, the Black Chamber s authority, already tenuous, was now declining even further: The Radio Act of 1927, which greatly broadened the Radio Communication Act enacted in 1912 (Bamford 1982), had come into effect, and Herbert

18 17 Hoover, who was a man of rigid ethical strictures and likely opposed to covert foreign surveillance, had just been inaugurated. Yardley was aware of his waning authority, but he had a plan to remedy it. The Radio Act of 1927 had a clause that allowed telegraph companies to hand over the telegrams on demand of lawful authority (Bamford 1982), and Yardley planned to avail himself of this clause by enlisting the help (and authority) of President Hoover: [Yardley] resolved to settle the matter with the new administration once and for all. He decided on the bold stroke of drawing up a memorandum to be presented directly to the President [which listed] the necessary steps that must be taken if the Government hoped to take full advantage of the skill of its cryptographers (Kahn 1996). However, Yardley s nerve failed when he attended a speech by President Hoover, and surmised, correctly, that Hoover would never agree to the proposal (Kahn 1996). Shorn of the authority of his superiors and facing declining patriotic spirit, strict legal restrictions, and financial disincentives, Yardley s situation was dire. Then, it worsened. In one variation [of Stanley Milgram s experiment], three teachers (two actors and a real subject) administered a test and shocks. When the two actors disobeyed the experimenter, and refused to go beyond a certain shock level, thirty-six of forty subjects joined their disobedient peers and refused as well (Milgram 1973). In other words, social proof can instigate rebellion and severely undermine the obedience to authority effect. Unfortunately, for Herbert Yardley and the Black Chamber, this was almost certainly what happened next. One by one the cable companies refused to cooperate with the Black Chamber, starting a snowball effect of social proof, until eventually all the carriers refused the Ciphers Bureau access to traffic (Kahn 2004). This brings me to my final observation: The methods of

19 18 persuasion we have discussed are a double-edged sword as Yardley found out to his dismay, they work both ways. Yardley then resorted to desperate measures and used his last method of persuasion, financial incentive, by bribing the employees of Postal Telegraph, All-America Cable, and Western Union he put them on a regular salary and paid them in cash (Kahn 2004). However, this lack of both cables and intercepted radio communication proved to be a major problem for the Black Chamber, a problem that would never be totally overcome (Bamford 1982). Yardley s once-soaring rocket now started its descent to earth, its fuel of messages exhausted (Bamford 1982). Works Cited

20 19 1. Asch, Solomon E "Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority." Psychological monographs: General and applied 70, no. 9: Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Cauley, Leslie "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls." USA Today Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Book III EBook. 1st ed. United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities Kahn, David, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. [Rev. ed.] New York: Scribner, Kahn, David, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking. New Haven: Yale University Press, Larson, Jeff, and Julia Angwin "NSA Spying Relies on AT&T S Extreme Willingness to Help ". ProPublica Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper & Row, Milgram, Stanley "The Perils of Obedience". Harper's Magazine, no. 247:

21 Yardley, Herbert. "American Black Chamber (Annotated Digital)" EBook. The William F. Friedman papers, the George C. Marshall Foundation.

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