It is likely that the threat of the Internet is what led NSA to broaden its spying program, and what remains to be reported by the media. Recall that Hayden was belly-aching about his threat during the time leading up to 9/11, and the NSA Transition 2001 report to Bush released by the National Security Archive on Friday states that the Internet is the big threat, and that there was a need for constant monitoring of the Net. NSA was doing that well before 9/11 but was not admitting it, not in public. Nor was it admitting the cooperation of the ISPs in this effort. Got to consider the AES initiative was a cooptation of the crypto terrorists after GAK failed, or appeared to have failed: there were a number of firms who jumped at the chance to build-in access, using a slew of hoary arguments about lost passwords, disloyal employees, corporate responsibility to control keys. And public key crypto has an odor that needs to be cleared of NDA suspicion or abandoned as if Crypto AG.