-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- O.K. I'm new... however... I remember reading an article about this news release in mid '94 (I believe it was the NY Times), about the time that Cray Computer Company (Seymour's unsuccessful spinoff company) was actively seeking bank financing. Anyone remember? The article was about an NSA contract award to Cray Computer. In some background: The Supercomputer industry had been struggling for a while with reductions in purchases from the U.S. government due to cutbacks on research spending and the 'end of the cold war'. The situation at MasPar had gotten to the point of court reorginization or worse. In June (of '94) Cray was in such a cash squeeze that it took out a $17.5 million secured loan to fend collapse. During July, Cray announced that it was seeking a "partner" to make an investment in exchange for technology access. Guess who shows up with plans to build "the ultimate spying machine"? Now, Seymour's a nice guy, but money is tight, so he buys in on the hopes for more a lucrative future relationship. The plot thickens. The contract calls for Cray to put up $4.6 million to cover the initial development (didn't they just take out a loan?) of which about $400,000 will go to the NSA for so called "software consulting services". It makes one wonder what the "real" contract was worth (such as producing this surveillance system in quantity)? There was some speculation in the article about what this system could be used for, such as DEA operations outside U.S. borders (Columbia perhaps) or foreign military communication or enhancement processing of spy satellite photos. What caught my attention was the architecture. A "hybrid design linking two supercomputer processors with an array of HALF A MILLION inexpensive processors" that were designed by the U.S. government laboratory affiliated with the NSA. The same chip house that brought us Clipper. I've not kept up with the "ultimate" demise that eventually befell Cray Computer Company, but the October 16 FBI filing on capacity for Digital Telephony got me thinking back to this article. 1% seems like a rather huge need for horsepower. And what if GAK doesn't fly? And the widespread use of hard crypto just keeps increasing? This kind of machine could, in theory: 1) Implement ALL Clipper(II) based Key Escrow functionality in silicon (the easy part) AND allow for simultaneous decrypt and surveil of 'who knows how many' Clipper based data streams. 2) Implement general RSA based Prime Factoring functionality in silicon (the not so easy part) AND allow massively parallel decrypt and surveil of 'who knows how many' RSA/etc. based data streams. 3) Implement it all, AND 'on-line' transaction based surveillance via the FBI's 1% capacity infrastructure. Chilling... Who needs key escrow (or RSA private keys) when you've got a massively parallel prime factoring machine. What if GAK was to become a 'non-issue'? How fast do you think a machine such as this could factor RSA 129? Makes you wonder if 2048 bits will be enough (my guess.. it won't). But then, I'm sure that when Cray Computer finally folded (has/hasn't?) all that tech just got sold for scrap eh? Anitro - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMNSadioZzwIn1bdtAQEgYwF+Nf5Azpeore6OPMNU94CpCawxPcPg8g7T kLQDY9I5Upk7vCe1dCpHm14g8jRYdSDx =vjJA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----