ORLANDO - The National Security Agency, America's high-tech spy agency and guru for military information security, is a secretive sort of creature that doesn't like to come out in the daylight, especially to deal with the media. So inviting the tech media, such as myself, to attend the NSA's first-ever "NSA Trusted Computing Conference and Exposition" was not an easy decision.
After all, they were letting some of their more prominent and smart NSA technical personnel out of the confines of places like Ft. Meade, the NSA headquarters, to talk about how much the agency wants to make use of commercial security products and virtualization -- and influence its development so it's good enough for the Top Secret mission-critical needs of the military.
But while the NSA had apparently decided to include the press at this first-ever conference, it was a decision fraught with much hand-wringing. Which leads me to tell you how I got thrown out of an NSA party — a first for me, I might add.
Let's begin. Just to show how tortured they were about this conference and inviting the press, NSA's public affairs split the conference apart, telling press like me that we could attend one full day of the three-day conference, but the last two days were off limits except for two one-hour sessions and a couple of demos. (Yikes, I've been invited to less than half a conference!)
One vendor trying to help NSA deal with its press-phobia issues was flabbergasted, saying, "It's like they don't really want you to come."
More @ http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/091610-nsa-party.html?hpg1=bn
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