[Cryptography] NSA versus DES etc....

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

On 09/28/14 23:34, Russ Nelson wrote:
> Why not? All of corporate America is that dumb. Corporate America has
> all the incentives in the world to make money, while the NSA has the
> usual bureaucratic (weaker) incentives.
>
> Every corporate leader who says "I will protect my IP by taking steps
> which make it harder to use" is indulging in this error. Why should
> the NSA be any different?
>
> http://www.crynwr.com/on-being-proprietary.html

during first decade of the century, there was big increase in privatization
and outsourcing fed. gov. to for-profit companies. over half the people and
70% of the budget of intelligence community is now by for-profit companies.

beltway bandits and for-profit military-industrial complex have used
gaming to come up with even more techniques to maximize revenue flow,
including a series of failed efforts represents more profit than
an initial success
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

supposedly in the wake of above, congress put the agency on propation and
not allowed to manage its own projects ... which may just have been ploy
to further privatize the agency (fed. agencies can't use appropriations to
"lobby" congress ... but private companies can ... claims are that congress
now expects something like 5% of such appropriations).

more on privatization
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

note that IBM was heavily involved in DES. The new CEO that was brought
in the early 90s to resurrect IBM and reverse breakup into the 13 "baby blues",
then leaves to head up one of the largest private equity companies ... which
then takes over the company mentioned in the above article. Private equity
companies have become notorious for wringing every possible dollar out of
an operation.

other background on the "success of failure" scenario

Director shelves working $3M ThinThread for multi-billion dollar Trailblazer that doesn't work
https://news.yahoo.com/three-former-employees-became-nsa-critics-163808602.html
Director shelves working $3M ThinThread for multi-billion dollar Trailblazer that doesn't work
http://www.whistleblower.org/bio-william-binney-and-j-kirk-wiebe
Trailblazer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project
now Turbulence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_%28NSA%29

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970