To become a Crypto Tech and go to Crypto school the DIS, in cooperation with the FBI,  had to conduct what's called a Special Background Investigation (SBI). This special level of investigation was for people who would access Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) during the course of doing their jobs. I found out that this was pretty rare later. Very few people get access to Top Secret (SCI), also known as (Codeword), clearances. I was also not aware that I would be processing some of the highest level secrets in the military which went through the NSA in Washington D.C.

In a weird twist of fate, ActivSoftware, one of the companies I co-founded, built a WYSIWYG, Web-based, HTML editor used by the Pentagon to track SCI investigations.

Keep in mind that until recently, now you see it in almost every movie, the actual existence of the NSA was a secret. I was not allowed to say I worked under the direction of the NSA. Now they refer to it like they do CIA and they have NSA and CIA spies running around the country brandishing weapons like James Bond. This is ludicrous for many reasons. The first of which is that there was always very strict controls keeping the CIA and NSA OUT of domestic matters. There is an intentional WALL between agencies to protect citizens from the awesome power of these spy agencies. That is why we have an FBI who has to operate under strict US laws such as search and seizure that the CIA and NSA are NOT bound to outside the US borders, and for really good reasons. We don't want this wall down folks. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was established for great reasons. It was kind of like saying that a US Citizen should not be spied on by the NSA since the NSA could listen to everything you say relatively easily with no warrants. I saw cell phone signals when I worked as a Crypto Tech, but I just threw them out. We, under no circumstance, to turn our gear inward, if you will. HOWEVER, if the signal was intercepted overseas, then all bets are off. This is the controversy with the Bush Spy thingy and the New York Times. Once your signal, voice or self leaves the boundaries of the USA, it's all fair game.

The Clinton Administration argued that whether you are overseas or here at home, if you were considered a foreign operative you could be treated similarly to they way we treat enemy combatants. A terrorist wears no uniform, nor were they a party to any agreement about treatment of prisoners of war, thus the entire agreement does NOT apply to them. This is like saying we have to be bound by rules of warfare that only we will be bound to. We likely might have lost the revolutionary war if we had to follow rules the Brits  followed. They marched in Red uniforms, on the path in a perfectly straight line and we mowed them down hiding behind rocks. This was perfectly reasonable since we never agreed that we too would walk down paths wearing fluorescent uniforms so that the enemy would have a politically  correct chance to win.

So, as a crypto tech I ran some pretty cool equipment. The bullseye High Frequency Direction finding system. This system basically grabbed ghost signals out of the air, let's just say it "looked at the signal" and sent it to D.C. and then we were done. It was a bit more complicated and it took almost a year and a half to learn how to do this and maintain these systems.