[Cryptography] TAO, NSA crypto backdoor program

[Lodewijk andré de la porte]

On Jan 2, 2014 2:16 PM, "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Looking through the 'mail order catalogue', are we sure that all these
capabilities are actual capabilities rather than projects attempting to
create them?

Some were planned projects. Regardless none of them are truly magical, and
all have environmental potential problems. Placing a radar next door
requires old school spying tactics. It's really good, but not magical. And
they are big enough to make magical possible. (See also "differential
cryptanalysis")

This is the tip of the icerberg.

> They have no limits in their ambitions to spend public money. Whether the
results perform as advertised is another matter. Wouldn't the war on terror
be over by now?

The war on terror was an excuse for this. To give you a feeling of the
scale.

> I suspect it works about as well as that start wars 'defense' system that
Reagan proposed. Decades later they still haven't had a single test that
wasn't faked. They certainly could not prevent an attack with Chevalene
type warheads which the UK withdrew from service before the project started.

Missile defense and third party contractors are a different ballgame. The
lack of practical testing is strange indeed though.
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