For fun, go to the NSA site, and observe the password prompts. Sounds to me like a design glitch — you can reach much of the material by just canceling the password prompts, so why not just make the material available without making people go through the hassle? But maybe it’s just some deep humor.
Scott says:
… and if, instead of cancelling, you enter a correct password, you see the same page as if you’d cancelled, do you?
January 3, 2010, 6:08 pmJohnKT says:
I must be getting old, I don’t see any password prompt.
I’ve been visiting the NSA web site, especially for VENONA decrypts, for years.
January 3, 2010, 6:57 pmDave N. says:
I didn’t get any password prompts either. I clicked several links at random looking for them.
January 3, 2010, 7:35 pmSW says:
No prompts.
January 3, 2010, 8:03 pmGaius Obvious says:
The jobs section promps you for passwords.
January 3, 2010, 8:24 pmDom says:
The careers login is there if you’re applying for jobs and want your data (resume, etc.) saved. I don’t see any prompts either.
January 3, 2010, 9:13 pmEugene Volokh says:
Huh, happens consistently for me, both in Firefox and in Explorer.
January 3, 2010, 10:56 pmGULC 3L says:
No prompts in Firefox or IE.
January 3, 2010, 11:08 pmJohn Armstrong says:
No prompts in Safari.
January 3, 2010, 11:31 pmDan Weber says:
I wonder if our host’s computer is compromised by some spyware hoping to sniff NSA passwords. That would be a hoot of a design, although kind of silly to try.
January 3, 2010, 11:43 pmduckhawk says:
More likely Mr. Volokh is using some kind of proxy setup that requires login and recognizes NSA or .gov sites.
January 4, 2010, 12:01 amRaghav says:
I got the password prompt, though clicking cancel didn’t make it go away. (The site did load in the background, though.)
January 4, 2010, 12:04 amSW says:
Weird. Maybe it’s California thing.
January 4, 2010, 11:56 amJack Diederich says:
I’ve seen this before with misconfigured DNS records and secondary content (like images or javascript) served by a different server than the main one. The main page loads OK but the secondary content has URLs for a server that requires a login so you get auth popups. The time I saw it an admin had accidentally pointed what was supposed to be an image server at a DNS server. The DNS server had an administration interface that required a login so some images on the page wouldn’t load but would popup an username/password prompt.
That kind of goof could be fixed quickly and because it is DNS based wouldn’t roll out to users at once. That would explain why not everyone here sees it (I don’t).
January 4, 2010, 1:49 pmDavidwhitewolf says:
I’m in California, using Firefox, and get no prompts.
January 4, 2010, 7:24 pmReversePhoneRay says:
Hands down one of the better posts I’ve come across.
February 28, 2010, 11:18 pm