NSA is resposible for so-called SIGINT and SIGSEC, acronyms for signals intelligence, to which you refer, and signals security, which IS to keep our communications safe.
It seems of course that SIGINT is what's "popular" in news.
It seems of course that SIGINT is what's "popular" in news.
I work on a web platform team, and I've seen many vulnerability reports over the years (well over 100). I've never seen a report from the NSA or US government. Actually, the only government I've seen reports from are the UK, so credit to them for actually doing something to keep people secure. But most reports I see are from project zero or Chinese companies.
Either the US government doesn't care at all about browser security or they are keeping vulnerabilities for themselves.
I ask because I considered code breaking and code making complimentary, in the sense they debug one another somewhat.
My guess is that this chance to debug one another motivates their coresidence in a single agency.