Logically, it seems the best thing for the NSA to do (given the political character of the group) is to send strong-but-not-that-strong crypto out.
I know I'm out of step with most of you on this point, and it could very well be that I'm incredibly naive. But I don't necessarily look at the NSA as an enemy. Right now we're on opposite sides of an important issue, and I think they're doing a lot of damage. But I tend to think that they believe what they're doing is in the national interest. They're trying to defend democracy -- our democracy, at least. Right now we're in a position to impose the first ammendment on the entire world. Not through a political process or a military attack, but rather with anarchy. (Anarchy as Tim has described it.) That's what this list is all about: we're trying to impose certain civil liberties on the world using a strategy that's based on anarchy theory. That theory tells us that if we can distribute tools and establish standards we'll secure privacy and free speech rights regardless of what governments do. That's a very startling idea, and I believe it's sound. I believe that it's possible to impose the first ammendment on the entire world by distributing crypto software. So the question we ought to be putting to the NSA is this: isn't it in the best interest of the United States and the other capitalist Western democracies to impose the first ammendment on the rest of the world? I don't see how anyone could argue that it isn't. Look at who our adversaries are in the world today. North Korea, Iraq, etc. Would any of those regiemes be able to survive if their citizens were able to safely critique their governments publicly? Is there any country in the world we can't get along with that allows ideas to flow freely? What are we giving up if we do this? Does anyone believe that strong crypto is beyond the reach of anyone who really wants or needs it? Will terrorists not have access to secure communications because our government won't let Netscape sell them an ssl web server? It's an absurd argument. I don't think the NSA is out to suppress our liberties. They're trying to protect the nation. Their problem is that they're operating under an old, obsolete paradigm. They're fighting for something that's simply not achievable: crypto is out of the box, and no one's going to put it back. Once you accept that fact -- and it is a fact -- you have to start formulating tactics based on reality as it exists now. Right now the NSA is trying to push us into sacrificing our liberty and privacy to an unwinnable cause. If they succeed (and I don't think they will), they will have done something terribly destructive in this country and we will have missed an extraorinary opportunity to effect substantive political change in the world at large. They are wrong and they are dangerous. But it is a mistake to think of them as evil, as people who will tell any lie to get what they want. I don't expect the NSA to adopt the cypherpunk world view. But it's too bad, because they'd do an awful lot of good all over the world if they did. Totalitarianism depends upon censorship and control over the mass media. If the NSA turned on a dime today, they could eliminate the possibility of totalitarianism within the year. Cypherpunks write code -- think of what the NSA could do.