The NSA’s podcast will have you listening in on them this time

By wazup on September 4, 2024 Comments Closed / 64 views

Starting tomorrow, you can listen to the NSA wherever you get your podcasts.

By Sheena Vasani, a writer covering commerce, e-readers, and tech news. She previously wrote about everything from web development to AI at Inside.

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The National Security Agency (NSA) will start sharing stories about some of the agency’s past missions in a new podcast. Dubbed No Such Podcast, the podcast will initially focus on foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity in the first two episodes, both of which will be available to listen to starting tomorrow, September 5th.

For years, the work of the NSA has been a closely kept secret. Then, in 2013, former agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret information about surveillance programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant. Outrage and intense debate over the agency’s actions quickly followed, and it continues to this day.

Now, we’ll find out what the NSA chooses to reveal in interviews with its experts.

The pilot episode of “No Such Podcast” features a declassified story of NSA’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) contributions to the U.S. government effort to take down Osama bin Laden, one of the architects of the September 11, 2001 attacks. This discussion will be followed by interviews with leaders on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, advanced research, and more.

A federal agency trying to tell its own stories isn’t a new concept. Last year’s movie Killers of the Flower Moon includes an FBI radio show, which references an actual series from the 1930s, The Lucky Strike Hour. It was just one of many media efforts by the FBI during that era, which included the J. Edgar Hoover-endorsed This is Your FBI radio crime drama that started in 1945.

The NSA will run six subsequent weekly episodes of No Such Podcast through mid-October, available on the usual platforms, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and YouTube.

“Because it’s sensitive, we can’t talk about some of our work, but it’s time to start telling more stories that we can talk about, sharing more of that expertise, and highlighting these incredible public servants,” Sara Siegle, NSA’s chief of strategic communications, said in a press release.