By their very nature the PowerPoint presentations created by the country’s security agencies aren’t meant for public consumption. In earlier posts we’ve looked at the spymaster PowerPoint skills of James Clapper the USA Director of National Intelligence. Then we reviewed his hassle with purloined presentation content in the spy chief PowerPoint presentation. But we’ve never looked at an NSA PowerPoint presentation before.

So the NSA PowerPoint presentation uncovered by the Guardian newspaper is highly revealing. For starters, there are 41 slides. No mean amount. First, it reveals the working methods of the National Security Agency (NSA) and their apparent love affair with all matters PowerPoint. But, second it reveals a presentation about the PRISM data collection project.

We’ll leave it to others to discuss matters security, civil liberties and criminal prosecutions. No doubt we expect to hear more about this.
NSA PowerPoint Presentation Slides
So we’ll take a peek at some of those PowerPoint slides. And aren’t they horrible. Because they appear to be slides taken from a PowerPoint presentation training deck. We just can’t believe that they form a security briefing for senior agency staff.
But, as training presentation slides they still appear a mess. A corporate template isn’t that obvious. That’s a feature that we might applaud in an alternative presentation. But these presentation slides simply drip with third party logos instead. Do the logos signal the co-operation or involvement of the third parties? Who knows. Undoubtedly someone will reveal more.
What we do know is that the technique of throwing logos onto a presentation slide is a lazy way of signalling third party involvement

Lists, arrows and text bubbles feature in the slide deck combining to give an effect that seems antiquated at best. Are these PowerPoint slides designed at all…or are they just thrown together by a security operations trainer?
Six More Things To Know…
When you are ready to find out some more, Lavanya Rathnam at Cloudwards.net has recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on Prism, Edward Snowden and government surveillance. Read more.
We can only guess at the professionalism of the spymasters involved with the Prism operation. But, we can not guess how they prepared such an amateurish PowerPoint presentation slide deck. Perhaps someone should spy into the potential of the SmartDraw PowerPoint presentation or some presentation software alternatives to PowerPoint. But your slides don’t always have to look professional to be effective. Because these PowerPoint slides were very effective for the Foreign Office in 2018.
However, when you are ready to prepare better looking PowerPoint slides you can always join us for a day’s training on a presentation skills training course. You can choose a course at one of more than 40 training centres in the country. Or, we can come to you and, run a training course at your offices. As an easy alternative, you can also enroll on an online presentation skills course. It’s your choice.
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