A collection of eight National Security Agency technology forecasting studies, spanning topics from privacy and anonymity to brain-network interfaces, advanced antennas and terahertz electronics, has been released through the Freedom of Information Act after a request that dated back to May 25, 2011. The original FOIA request sought ten documents described as “Point Forecasts issued by the Futures Intelligence Team.” The requested studies covered solid-state lighting for wireless communications, human interaction with computer networks, antenna technology, energy storage and ultrathin electronics, post-Moore’s Law materials, terahertz microelectronics, harvested power, bio-inspired computing, privacy and anonymity, and position-location technologies. The documents requested…
Author: John Greenewald
The National Security Agency has upheld its refusal to confirm or deny whether it possesses intelligence records concerning the alleged “Immaculate Constellation” program, rejecting a Freedom of Information Act appeal filed by The Black Vault. The decision does not establish that Immaculate Constellation exists, that NSA participated in such a program, or even that NSA possesses records about it. Instead, NSA maintains that simply answering the question on whether responsive intelligence records exist at all, would itself disclose classified and statutorily protected information. That distinction is particularly significant in this case. The Department of War has publicly denied having any…
On the night of September 11, 2012, armed attackers assaulted U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, beginning at the State Department’s Special Mission compound and continuing into the early hours of September 12 at a nearby CIA annex. Four Americans were killed: U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. The attack occurred amid a deteriorating security environment in post-revolution Libya, where the central government had limited control over numerous armed militias and extremist organizations. The State Department’s independent Accountability Review Board later reported that there…
PROMIS has accumulated decades of controversy, competing claims and, at times, confusion over what the name itself actually refers to. The records released by the National Security Agency provide an important distinction. The NSA’s PROMIS, or Product Management Information System, was an intelligence-product management database developed during the 1970s. According to records released to The Black Vault under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the system was designed to organize information associated with intelligence reports and give senior signals intelligence managers a way to search, analyze and manage information about those products. It should not simply be equated with the…
More than nine years after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was submitted to the National Security Agency, the agency has released a heavily redacted copy of a 1972 NSA Technical Journal article titled “Maybe It’s Related to the Phase of the Moon…” The Black Vault submitted the request on August 6, 2017, seeking the article, which was published in the Fall 1972 edition of the journal. The NSA ultimately processed the request as FOIA Case 102240 and issued its response on August 25, 2026. The article, written by Herbert S. Guy, Jr., concerns the analysis of a callsign…