ALL the intelligence agencies suffer from the same problems. It's not that they are too secure, they are too cheap to spend actual money on proven systems and security mechanisms. Until recently, the NSA considered filtering routers as "firewalls" and they were generally all that was used to pretect super-secret systems.

As far as the Palm Pilots go... it's all too easy to enter secret information in one and then walk out of the building with the secret. Who's to know that you downloaded your Palm Pilot info to a site used by your Russian controller? Can we say Robert Hanssen? He's one of the ones who pushed for Palm Pilots.

Security officers at the intelligence agencies have a hard time convincing higher-ups to spend money on "real" security and spend much of their time trying to control laptops, palm pilots, two-way pagers, cell phones with radios, and even Internet access. The only reason the intelligence agencies' secrets are kept secret is that their networks are heavily screened and bulk encrypted.

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