That Awkward NSA FOIA Answer
In the news recently, there has been an article making the rounds that makes the NSA look--well, bad, frankly. Here is one such article.
From the article:
In a vault at the National Security Agency lies a historical treasure: two AMPEX 1-inch open reel tapes containing a landmark lecture by Admiral Grace Hopper, a giant in the field of computer science. Titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” this lecture, recorded on August 19, 1982, at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters, and stored in the video archives of the National Cryptographic School, offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a pioneer who shaped the very fabric of technology. Yet this invaluable artifact remains inaccessible, trapped in an obsolete format that the NSA will not release, stating that the agency is unable to play it back.
It is not an insoluble problem.
The solution is easy enough as the article goes on to state:
AMPEX 1-inch Video Tape Recorders (VTRs) were produced in three types: A, B and C, with Type C becoming the industry standard due to its quality and reliability. To access Admiral Hopper’s lecture, the NSA or an affiliated party would need to source a compatible VTR. While these machines are rare, they are not extinct, with outside organizations and collectors holding the key to unlocking this piece of history. Given the NSA’s extensive network and collaborative relationships with various organizations and affiliates, the agency is well-positioned to locate, borrow and use a working VTR machine to access Admiral Hopper’s lectures as well as other content currently found only on AMPEX 1-inch videotape.
Conclusion: Something is on these tapes that the NSA does not want to release.
An interesting background dig on AMPEX and how it was created is maybe revealing:
Ampex is one of the most famous manufacturers of audio and video tape recorders in the world. The company had its start in 1944 in California. Alexander M. Poniatoff, an electrical engineer and an émigré from Russia, started the company in San Carlos, California, and made small electric motors that were used in military equipment. When the war ended in 1945, Poniatoff began looking for new products to make. He heard about the German Magnetophon, examples of which had been brought to the United States (and other countries). Because Germany had been defeated in the war, the Allied governments considered most German technology and patents up for grabs. Ampex engineers made many improvements to the original design but kept all of its key features. Engineers hired by Poniatoff, such as Harold Lindsay and Myron Stolaroff, helped design the first model, the Model 200, which was introduced in 1948 and became an instant hit among radio broadcasters and recording studios. Ampex recorders were sold worldwide, and many machines made in the early 1950s are still in use today.
Industry Recognition: The six-man team that developed the first practical videotape recorder gather around the results of their labors, the Ampex Mark III, with the Emmy Award won by Ampex in 1957. They are, left to right, Charles E. Anderson, Ray Dolby, Alex Maxey, Shelby Henderson, Charles Ginsburg, and Fred Pfost.
One of the first customers for the Ampex audio recorder was the legendary singer Bing Crosby. In the middle 1940s, Crosby and his assistants were searching for alternative means to live radio performances. They began using phonograph recorders to capture their programs, but it was difficult to copy or edit the discs without degrading the sound. In 1947 Crosby became interested in the German Magnetophon recorder as a potential substitute, and for a brief time used a captured German Magnetophon on the air. However, this option was eventually discarded because there were only a few machines available and almost no spare parts. About that time, the Ampex 200 appeared, and Crosby was impressed. The CBS radio network ordered several Ampex machines to record Crosby’s shows, and became the first major network to regularly broadcast recorded material.
As Ampex recorders became the workhorses of the industry, their sales financed the creation of the next big product for Ampex: videotape recording. The company introduced its VTR-1000 recorder in 1955, and introduced the word videotape into our vocabulary (videotape was originally an Ampex trademark). As in the case of audio recording, the company was not the inventor of videotape recording technology, but its machines incorporated key improvements and became the standard in television studios for years to come.
Source: https://ethw.org/Ampex_Corporation
Let's untangle all that. A Russian immigrant, gained access to Nazi technology, and made a recording device that was backed by the guy who was famous for singing White Christmas. Oh yeah, the daughter of that guy eventually wound up for a time on a TV show called Star Trek: The Next Generation. Natasha "Tasha" Yar, the security officer in the first season, was portrayed by Denise Crosby. One wonders if the character's name wasn't inspired by Yar's Revenge, which was another format the NSA probably can't play requiring a machine called the Atari. Atari, the word, is a position in the game of "Go" where a piece is about to be captured. The word itself usually means something like "surroundings". Japan, it will be recalled, was on what side in World War II?
Another potential point concerns Lyndon Johnson who made a lot of secret recordings of things like phone calls. Probably, he used AMPEX at least partially, and it is easy to see that as late as '75 no less of an engineering company than NASA was making use of AMPEX to feed data into computers.
What does it all mean? Well, it's clear that the pathway this technology has followed is full of points related to security and secrets and that it is not especially hard to trace out the evolution of its existence. Whatever Grace Hopper had to say, it is not as though the NSA simply can't source one of these machines. For some reason, they really don't want to exert the effort. Probably Hopper had something to say that would not be especially well-received in the current political climate. Answer? Censored through perceived obsolesce. Make the information free, but impede the retrieval.