That's pretty interesting. During the Variola debates concerning how much NSA could actually backhaul, I made the point that some a lot could probably be ascertained by looking at what NSA was funding publicly. For example, by looking at NSA funding of burst-mode optical networking, one could infer that NSA probably has a significant gap in terms of what they WANT to grab and what they actually can grab and backhaul (plus, there are certain fundamental limits to optical systems that would lead one to conclude something similar). This, I believe, is confirmed by what was revealed about the NSA "secret room" in AT&T's CO in the Bay Area. Arguably, a well-done and perhaps trust-based wiki could wiggle a lot of out what NSA is involved in, but of course there'd still be huge gaps. On the other hand, in some areas (such as chip fabrication) I think it's getting safe to say that NSA can't be more than one generation ahead of existing fabrication technologies, if at all. Thus, one could make some accurate upper-bound statements about capabilities and add that to the known funding. Does NSA fund stuff just to avoid precisely this type of reverse engineering? I'd bet they do, and learned to do so during the soviet era. But I also suspect it's possible to sniff those out too. -TD

Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:30:45 +0100> From: eugen@leitl.org> To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net> Subject: Wikileaks: NSA funding of academics> > ----- Forwarded message from John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> -----> > From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:57:27 -0800> To: cryptography@metzdowd.com> cc: whitfield.diffie@sun.com, gnu@toad.com> Subject: Wikileaks: NSA funding of academics> > https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/On_the_take_and_loving_it> > Grant code 'MDA904' - National Security Agency> > The NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into the academy> through research grants using one particular grant code. ...> > John> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------> The Cryptography Mailing List> Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com> > ----- End forwarded message -----> -- > Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org> ______________________________________________________________> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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