Decipher Dog and Crypto Cat really just want to get along

The turtle wearing a hat backward, baggy jeans and purple sunglasses looks just like other cartoon characters that marketers use to make products like cereal and toys appealing to children.
But the reptile, known as T. Top, who says creating and breaking codes is really “kewl,” is pushing something far weightier: the benefits of the National Security Agency. 

“In the world of diplomacy, knowing what your enemy is planning helps you to prepare,” the turtle says. “But it is also important that your enemies do not know what you have planned. It is the mission of the National Security Agency and the Central Security Service to learn what it can about its potential enemies to protect America’s government communications.” 

Such an enthusiastic endorsement of the N.S.A.’s mission might seem particularly timely given the criticism directed at the agency since one of its former contractors, Edward J. Snowden, began leaking documents he had stolen from it. But T. Top and a troupe of eight other smiley-faced cartoon characters have been busy promoting the N.S.A.’s mission for the past nine years as part of a government wide attempt to make agencies more understandable to the public. With cartoon characters, interactive games and puzzles, the N.S.A.’s CryptoKids website for “future codemakers and codebreakers” tries to educate children about spying duties and recruit them to work for the agency. 

As the website says: “It is never too early to start thinking about what you want to do when you grow up.” >To enter the “How Can I Work for N.S.A.?” section of the site, children click on a picture of a bucktoothed rabbit, who says in his biography that he likes listening to hip-hop and rock. In his free time, the bunny says, he participates in cryptography competitions with other cartoon characters named Decipher Dog and CryptoCat.

“As a signals analyst, you will work with cutting edge technology to recover, understand and derive intelligence from a variety of foreign signals found around the world,” children are told in the future employment section. “You will also attempt to identify the purpose, content, and user of these signals to provide critical intelligence to our nation’s leaders.”

One official described the difficulties he had while speaking to school groups about the NSA, and his inability to convince students that Snowden was a “bad guy” who had done serious harm to U.S. national security. He asked us how he could more compellingly and convincingly make that case to young people. Bewildered, we asked why the merits of the surveillance programs turn in any way on whether Snowden’s a patriot or a traitor. Even President Obama has conceded that the public debate we’re now having is “welcome,” regardless of where we end up as a result. 

But the NSA official’s reply seemed to suggest that these two perspectives are mutually exclusive—that we must choose between Snowden and the NSA. If we believe Snowden is a bad guy, then the NSA must be right. And if we believe he acted in what he thought were the best interests of the country, the NSA must be wrong.