At 02:23 AM 8/5/04 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

The impracticability of breaking symmetric ciphers is only a

comparatively

small part of the overall problem.

Indeed. Following Schneier's axiom, go for the humans, it would not be too hard to involutarily addict someone to something which the withdrawl from which readily compromises any human. Since torture is now legitimized in the US, or its proxies, have a beer (or stronger, etc) Mohammed. Of course, the green card offered to the housecleaning illegal is simpler. Ask Nikky Scarfo. And there's nothing like raping one's children to convince the reticent... particularly if one's halal meal has been doped with various psychopharms.. ------ The problem with quantum computing will be coercing the qubits to do you bidding (not just toy problems) without losing their waviness. Not relevent to the nano-args, but your energy consumption calcs do make it clear that Ft Meade will need some awfully big radiators :-) Then again, its not that far from the ocean, a rather extreme heatsink... Still I concede that Ft Meade has no finer features than IBM. But when economics *don't* dictate, as they do everywhere else, one has to ponder. Still, the 'tographers beat the 'analysts, as you say, for sufficiently large keys, and sufficiently different chained ciphers. Don't put all your squeamish ossifrage eggs in one basket, eh? And stay away from Athens, ok?