Photo above: The first US patent granted to Samuel Hopkins on July 31, 1790 (Source: http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-988 ).
The Foreign Policy magazine recently published an interesting piece on the number of patents the US National Security Agency has been granted by the American government since 1979.
These patents are behind the more than 270 spying devices, methods and designs used by the NSA’s “tens of thousands of cryptologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists who routinely come up with novel ways to protect — and steal — electronic data”, according to Foreign Policy.
Interestingly, as the chart above from the magazine shows, the NSA obtained 127 patents since 2005 – almost as many patents as it did in the previous 25 years – the year the former NSA director Keith Alexander came onboard.
Alexander retired from the NSA in March and announced last month he will seek as many as nine new patents for a computer security system he’s building at the private security firm he has co-founded, IronNet Cybersecurity, Inc.
His announcement has raised eyebrows (like the photo above) and when asked whether he was cashing in on classified information he has learned at the NSA, Alexander said he didn’t develop the idea while working at the agency.
“If I retired from the Army as a brain surgeon, wouldn’t it be OK for me to go into private practice and make money doing brain surgery?” he said.
“I’m a cyber guy. Can’t I go to work and do cyber stuff?”
Check out the Foreign Policy link to the list of NSA Patents.
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