| Now, all I need is for you guys to explain coherently *why* it's a | good coup and what the political implications are, and I'll feed the | story to the UK press. (I don't think anyone here has it yet...) It is a coup because it means that codes released to the public do get reverse engineered. The release of A5 bodes poorly for Skipjack. If the NSA wants Skipjack to remain secret, they can not release it, in hardware or software. Cyphers to be used by the public will be studied and understood. The public no longer trusts governments to be honest. In the USA, this is a result of our free press printing things like the Pentagon papers, where the government documented the fact that it lied to us, systematically, for years. We do not trust the NSA, the ATF, or the DEA with our privacy. They have repeatedly shown they will try to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to get at people they don't like. Just ask CISPES, the Branch Dividians, or Rev. Aceyne (sp?) Williams widow. Adam (CISPES is the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, a left wing group working in support of the revolutionaries of El salvador. The FBI monitored, infiltrated, and harrassed them for 5 years with no evidence that they were breaking any law. The Davidians everyone knows. Rev. Williams (age 77) was killed by Boston drug police who burst into the wrong apartment, threw him to the floor, and gave him a heart attack. (In the newspapers Thanksgiving Day, 1993)) -- Adam Shostack adam@bwh.harvard.edu Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small, annoying bloodsucker.