Pre-cursor to Non-Secret Encryption

[Steven M. Bellovin]

In message <E19SR38-0001Qe-00 at blount.mail.mindspring.net>, John Young writes:

>
>Related: We have a three-year-old FOIA request to NSA for 
>information on:
>
>  The invention, discovery and development of "non-secret 
>  encryption" (NSE) and public key cryptography (PKC) by 
>  United Kingdom, United States, or any other nation's 
>  intelligence and cryptology agencies, prior to, parallel with, 
>  or subsequent to, the PKC work of Diffie-Hellman-Merkle. 
>
>NSA has recently said that some responsive information 
>may be released in the near future, although it is not clear if 
>that is weeks or months or years away.
>

Can you amend that to ask for digital signature information, too?  From 
my research on Permissive Action Links, I think there's some chance 
that digital signatures were invented separately, possibly by NSA 
before GCHQ's non-secret encryption work.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)



---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com