NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, from the air

1986

Trevor Paglen's aerial photograph of NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, released CC0. It stands in for the institutional side of the story: the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Computer Security Act of 1987, and the agency that would sit at the centre of the crypto wars and the 2013 disclosures. Ronald Reagan dedicated the new NSA operations buildings in September 1986. The subject dates from 1986; the photograph itself is later.