[ih] Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet -- Some Questions

[Jack Haverty]

In Lick's group, publication was never a priority; writing code and
building systems was the focus.  Maybe that was to avoid issues if
different audiences discovered the others' view of the "Elephant"....

So there aren't many historical papers about the work done there.  It's
unfortunate because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on,
especially with 4 decades of hindsight.

There was one paper about the Morse project published rather obscurely
in a conference proceedings.  A poor but mostly legible copy survives in
DTIC.  The paper about the Morse Project starts on page 128:

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a143691.pdf

AFAIK, nothing we did in Lick's group was classified - at least not from
our perspective.

Some of you might find that paper interesting or at least nostalgic.

/Jack


On 04/14/2018 11:18 AM, Bill Ricker wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 7:15 AM, Dave Walden
> <dave.walden.family at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jack,
>>
>> My memory is that CCA (Computer Corporation of America -- Tom Merrill's
>> company) did the DataComputer.
> 
> Data Computer is a CCA trade name at least much later, so Jack's
> suggestion of Data Computer and my thought of Prof O'Neil's work on
> CCA Model 204 DB which was known to be used by the spooks are heading
> in the same direction.
> 
> 
>> They mighxt also have been at 545 Tech
>> Square at the time but I am unsure of that.  IBM (the "Cambridge
>> Scientific" lab?) was also there (as you note) and did other important
>> things (my memory is vague, so I am uncertain of the following things
>> ... the beginning of CP/CMS operating system, Script text processing
>> system, creation of GML,
> 
> All true ... I spent a very happy supper at IBM Cambridge Science Center in '79.
> 
>> I think they may also have had the other CTSS
>> system, etc.) but I don't remember this group being connected to the
>> ARPANET (IBM was pushing SNA -- proprietary networking).
> 
> AFAIK, yes, they had their own SNA backbone. I don't recall hearing of
> BITNET there.
> 
> Jack -
> 
> Very interesting about the Morse Code program.
>       An aside: Dad graduated from Morse Code Intercept School at Ft
> Devens during the Korean excitement -- it beat going to Infantry
> school and then Korea, he figured, even if he wound up in Incirlik. He
> had to recycle the class, so wound up at Vint Hill Farm Station near
> Manassas VA, much better. His diploma was unclassified, send to Mom,
> but his 05H MOS of Morse Intercept Operator was classified. Colonel
> giving diplomas couldn't explain how that made sense. Given how poor
> morale was -- they recruited honors graduates to do this rote work
> transcribing quintuples of nonsense, a living modem between headphones
> and a typewriter -- apparently because of their aptitude test
> confounding pattern-matching and raw intelligence -- replacing Morse
> Intercept operators with a computer would have been merciful. They had
> guys on Morse Intercept who should have been assigned to the
> Cryptanalytic team or Traffic Analysis/Correlation, memorialized as
> "Army's biggest waste of brain power" in an expose white-paper. Dad
> wasn't cleared to know that his Vint Hill unit of ASA had already been
> reorganized into a new Joint entity called NSA. (NSA was Joint before
> Joint was cool.) To this day Dad hates Morse Code and has no interest
> in ASA veterans being eligible for the Retired Spooks society. But his
> "weekends" researching in the Library of Congress (possibly the first
> public Air Conditioned building in Virginia/DC) cemented long-distance
> courtship with my Mom, so he has that one positive memory from his
> Army days. 73 DE N1VUX
> 
>>> attached to the ARPANET), and even a stealth office of the CIA (really -
>>> but that's another story), which I accidentally "outed" one day while
>>> trying to run computer cables up to the roof through the elevator shaft.
>>>   Oops.
> 
> Interesting.
> That might be connected to the CAM/AGILE, or project officers for the
> database, or something else entirely, maybe monitoring Soviets or
> domestic threats in Peoples Republic of Cambridge :-).
> 
>>> Again, an Elephant which looks quite different to different audiences.
> 
> Quite so.
> 
>>> LCS itself,
>>> AFAIK, did not do any classified work.  Draper Labs did ...  Probably
>>> Lincoln too but I never worked there.
> 
> 
> Lincoln Labs and their spin-off MITRE*  most certainly had classified
> work.  In the 1980s, the MITRE department Mike Padlipsky (ex of MIT
> Project MAC, e.g. MULTICS ARPAnet implementation) and I were in was
> working with "The Community". I wasn't cleared to know what some of
> the others were doing.
> 
> * (MITRE officially does NOT stand for MIT Radar Engineering, it is
> officially NOT an Acronym. Because trademarks.  MITRE was originally
> spun-off from Lincoln to take the MIT-LL design for SAGE to RFP and
> fielding, as contracted contract management, which MIT felt was
> outside MIT-LL's remit and mission. I knew people who were called to a
> LL conference room one day in 1958 and told they were now MITRE
> employees, please pick up your new badge at security.)
> 
> Land-lord to the stealth CIA office would be one. :-)
>     If Prof O'Neil was involved with CIA/NSA and DataComputer / Model
> 204 work in LCS prior to the CCA spinoff/spinup, that would likely
> have been at least mildly classified as to who / why. (Live data would
> have been highly classified.) Unclear if National Library of Medicine
> usage of Model 204 was an intentional dual-use* cover-story or just
> "hey if you're funding that, can we use it too?"; I'm unsure
> if/how-long they managed to keep CCA's CIA/NSA sponsorship secret.
> 
> * (The Community had used venture capital to create dual-use cover
> elsewhere: ITEK Photo typesetting was intentionally set up as a
> dual-use cover for ITEK manufacturing lenses for CORONA satellites.
> The super sharp super high power high-tech lenses needed to record
> land 100 miles below onto film crisply were exactly what would make
> phototypesetting from a collection of photo-negative masters work.
> Once CORONA was officially declassified, The Museum of Printing's
> master calligrapher boardmember (RIP, Louis), who had been a font
> designer at ITEK, gave the annual lecture on CORONA's relevance to
> typographic progress. )
> 
>