DownWithTyranny!: "Egotisticalgiraffe" could be a new pet name for Ted "Jesus, I Suck" Cruz, but how about "Whitetamale" and "Moneyrocket"?

Plus, Richard Cohen walks back his "just plain
wrong" (mis)judgments of Edward Snowden

"Some computer has a strange sense of humor. . . . I'm waiting for ‘Rusticrhubarb.' "

-- Matthew Aid, author of The Secret Sentry: The
Untold History of the National Security Agency

by Ken

No, it turns out that the egotistical giraffe has nothing to do with Senator Scum, any more than white tamale is "the name of a vegetarian special at a Tex-Mex joint, or possibly an ethnicity-bending rap artist," as our pal Al Kamen speculates in his Washington Post "In the Loop" item "Odd names for spy games."

In fact, "Egotisticalgiraffe" is "the moniker given to a technique that allowed the NSA to uncover the identities of those using a communications system designed to keep users anonymous," while "Whitetamale" is "a project in which U.S. agents hacked into Mexican officials' e-mails" and "Moneyrocket" "target[s] counterterrorism in the Middle East, Europe and Asia." In case you haven't guessed yet, these odd epithets and such others as "Shiftingshadow," "Yachtshop," "Steelflauta," "Stormbrew," and "Fairview" are National Security Agency (NSA) code names, a subject that came to public notice via that gift that keeps on giving, the leaked documents of Edward Snowden. (And speaking of Edward Snowden, see the note below.)

But, Al asks, "what's behind the odd titles?"

Matthew Aid , author of "The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency," explains that most of the NSA's code names are no more than computer-generated sequences of words.

"Some computer has a strange sense of humor," he said. "I've never met an egotistical giraffe. I'm waiting for ‘Rusticrhubarb.' There are only so many words in the English language."

They are intentionally random so as to avoid indicating the kind of operation it is or whose identity is being protected, Aid says.

Witness some of the other cable-intercept programs included in the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Aid's wackier favorites include "Moneyrocket" (targeting counterterrorism in the Middle East, Europe and Asia), "Shiftingshadow" (Afghanistan and Pakistan), and "Yachtshop" (worldwide Internet metadata).

And then there's the mysterious "Steelflauta," which sounds as if it could be related to Whitetamale. (A flauta is a rolled taco.)

The NSA's daily workings are rife with code names. Missions, programs, operations, companies and individuals are assigned them. The bizarre lexicon then shows up in slide presentations — which made up the bulk of Snowden's document dump.

For example, Aid says, the telecom companies that participated in the PRISM program were given nifty (and random) aliases. Verizon is "Stormbrew," while AT&T is "Fairview."

Yet some names seem intentionally chosen. An operation for hacking into Mexican officials' e-mails just happened to be called Whitetamale? And PRISM, for example, seems to evoke the program's mission. "That one does actually sound like a human sat down" and created it, he said.

And sometimes it seems that there's a sly sense of humor at work. The NSA's first cable-intercept program, created during the Cold War, was called "Shamrock," though it was eventually shuttered after criticism from Congress. Its replacement? The NSA dubbed it "Blarney."

SPEAKING OF EDWARD SNOWDEN, DID YOU
CATCH RICHARD COHEN'S POST COLUMN . . .

. . . in which he said flat-out that he had been "just plain wrong" in his earlier "judgments" on Snowden? It's a column called "Edward Snowden is no traitor," which is actually tougher than the title suggests.

It's easy to say that a modicum of sense is all Cohen would have needed to refrain from rushing to judgment on the subject, and it's true. But I think it's only fair to give him credit for so forthrightly walking back his original misjudgments and in so doing giving proper credit to the importance of the revelations mined from Snowden's documents. I know I make fun of Cohen a lot (he's such an easy target), but as I also point out periodically, there are times when he rises to the occasion.

He's done a particular service here because he's called new attention to the importance of those revelations, which is what the story should have been all along -- a story that all those foolish howls of "traitor" to such an unfortunate extent successfully obscured. As a result, I'm thinking that a separate post about the Cohen column may be appropriate. Or you could just read it yourself.