-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 10:38:57AM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 09:46:25PM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote:
Fine. My basis for my claim is that the NSA is the best funded and best equiped electronic intelligence agency in the world, and they have employed some of the smartest people in the world.
Sorry, but this is hand-waving. There are smart people outside the NSA and there is money outside the NSA.
Understood. But the NSA's budget is somewhat higher than most crypto think-tanks.
Fine, it's a claim made by the clueless. I'm not claiming to be something other than clueless, but I am claiming to have not meant what I sent to this list. Again, not a good proofreader. Again, sue me.
No, you'll just be ridiculed instead. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you have not provided it.
Why aren't people understanding that I'm not saying that the NSA has found a miraculous way to break ciphers? They may have, I don't know. The point is, when I said they could break "ciphers," I should have said "cipher implementations." I.E. software that does cryptography. Software is damn near always buggy. Look, people, you can continue to ridicule me for what I said earlier, but it would be a waste of time. We're essentially agreeing.
Think of it from a longtime cypherpunk's perspective: We see people come in here and say the same thing as you every month or so, and offer much in the way of not-very-informed speculation but little in the way of proof.
-Declan
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