From: thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug)

Since none of us have ever been inside the NSA, we cannot underestimate their power and resources. For all we know they may have 500 Intel Delta supercomputers linked together, each having 65,536 i860-XP/50mhz chips. We really don't know what kind of iron they possess. Thus we can't assume that they can't factor extremely large numbers easily.

Um, I've been inside the NSA, (and I don't have a clearence.) They have a very nice visitors center, where they display some of their more arcane technology, along with little placards explaining what the hardware does. For instance, they display a very nice looking u-wave radio-based computer (complete with wax lenses), and a light-based floating-point engine that develops God-only-knows how many hundres Gflops, and yes, it can be custom programmed. They display a RISC core (of their own design) than also has a custom crypto unit on-chip, said unit can be field re-programmed. Also displayed are various arcane (antique) crypto devices. Jim P.S. Admittedly, I didn't get very far inside..