matt cutts and the national security agency matt cutts had his resume posted at in i have a copy it says january august department of defense savage road ft george g meade md co operative education student completed four work tours over a year total with the national security agency during my first tour i produced a sizable report on unix security which resulted in a special performance cash award on other tours i worked on natural language processing tools telecommunications and hardware design of an encryption chip i said on my site that he has a top secret clearance in matt cutts pointed out that his clearance has expired i changed my references to past tense once i learned of his comment it remains true that he had a top secret clearance you don't work on encryption chips at the nsa unless you have a security clearance