Chapter 4 - 6 Summary

Susan walks into the main room of the Crypto facility, which houses TRANSLTR, the NSA's top-secret decryption computer. The bulk of TRANSLTR is locked in a ceramic silo beneath the floor of the Crypto facility. It is surrounded by catwalks and cables. Power generators are at the bottom and a Freon cooling system regulates the temperature. The hum from the generators gives Crypto's acoustics a "dead, ghostlike quality."

The NSA designed TRANSLTR to break public-key encryption pass codes. Computer programmers had created public-key encryptions when computer users learned that the U.S. government had open access to their email communications. The public was outraged and demanded that their email messages be secure.

In response to the public's demands, computer programmers designed public-key encryptions to scramble email messages. A message could not be unscrambled without a pass code. When the NSA started...