Have you ever seen a FOIA request for a work of art?

In March 2010, Elonka Dunin filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the NSA, asking to see "all available information about the team's work, and a copy of the memo that was sent to CIA."

Kryptos is a sculpture by Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Installed in 1990, its thousands of characters contain encrypted messages, of which three have been solved (so far). There is still a fourth section at the bottom consisting of 97 characters which remains uncracked.

Elonka Dunin is co-founder and co-leader of a group of cryptographers who are working hard to crack a code on the famous Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters, and led the international team that cracked the related KGB Cyrillic Projector Cipher in 2003, also a sculpure by Jim Sanborn.

Here is a link to the NSA response to Elonka's FOIA request for information (40 pages).

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7G1aFZQuZtXRmRkcmhkNGtqQ2c/edit?pli=1

Here is a link to Elonka Dunin's web page that contains facinating links to art and cryptogoly with notes on her FOIA request on this work of art. http://elonka.com/kryptos/foia.html

Here is a link to the current official NSA.gov information on the sculpture, "Kryptos".

https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/cia_kryptos_sculpture.shtml

KGB Cyrillic Projector Cipher, 2003 (left), and Kryptos (right) by Jim Sanborn (1990)

#Sanborn #ElonkaDunin #Kryptos