-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- An anonymous author writes:
For all their vaunted competence, for all the mathematicians they have been alleged to employ, despite having a cryptography budget orders of magnitude larger than any other Western crypto group, it looks like the NSA contribued to _none_ of the major advances in cryptography that occured during its zenith.
The above assumes that if the NSA does something interesting they'll tell the world about it. I'm not sure that's a plausible assumption. They seem to view their mission as creating and maintaining a balance-of-power of intelligence in favor of the United States; specifically, gathering intelligence, preserving their ability to gather intelligence, and preventing others from gathering intelligence. Revealing the existence or substance of crypto breakthroughs isn't necessarily compatible with that mission, at least as it's been historically understood. (I think remailers are good, but their use makes it necessary to write to the list to reply; I'd have preferred to reply in E-mail.) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.5 iQCVAgUBLg56633YhjZY3fMNAQEUrwP+OKCOWXHtiMh6dLoe8owILD5N26AIKtpY dEdp74XlJ1pCagyIUsEeMNjvBPpH3xHpCZKygHWfPI74GRrDoxpDOdfIiHM6kDmI fDwQf395aDrNrYcZJFOBVEM6FwpW3iMNZ8TRJPsLqKMbYSxq/pu/ST45jlxRg2eO 7eZjdJmqz8Q= =BgnT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----