Saturday, June 11, 2011
(photo: National Archives)
More than 200 hundred years after it was produced, a book on cryptology is finally being declassified by the U.S. government.
The National Security Agency (NSA) decided that the 1809 book, Cryptology: Instruction Book on the Art of Secret Writing, was okay to release, along with a collection of 50,000 pages of historic records that will be transferred to the National Archives for public viewing.
Most of the documents date back to World War II and the early post-War era. Among the other documents previously thought to be too dangerous to release:
· A 1946 study entitled “Chinese Persons”
· 1951 telephone listings for the American Foreign Service Association
· Congressional bills of interest to the NSA in 1954
· A 1935 German report on the Russian Navy
· Interrogation Report of UFFZ Keller on Hand System Used in Polish Illicit Traffic (1945)
The CIA declassified several documents last April on the use of “invisible ink” that went back to World War I.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
NSA Declassifies 200 Year Old Report (by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News)
NSA Declassifies 200-Year-Old Book (by Noah Shachtman, Wired)
NSA Documents Released to NARA in April 2011 (Federation of American Scientists) (pdf)
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