[Cryptography] On 40-bit encryption

[ianG]

On 23/08/2014 04:34 am, David Kane-Parry wrote:
>> There was an article printed in I think _Foreign Affairs_ from a long
>> time ago that was found and referenced by (IIRC) Ross Anderson by some
>> crypto warriors.
>>
>> In there was an anecdote about the games they played with the South
>> Africans.  They stopped crypto exports to them.  But then the South
>> Africans started developing an indigenous capability.  So the NSA opened
>> up the crypto exports again in order to squash the local companies.
> 
> "Nothing impressed me very much and all I discovered was that cryptology was an arcane science for bored mathematicians, not for underground activists.”
> 
> Talking To Vula: The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula - http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4693

Nice story!

Lucky that was all in the 1980s.  He would not have been allowed to do
that in the 1990s ;-)

iang