Breaking the NSA

[Jonathan Rochkind]

At 6:31 PM 12/07/94, DNA wrote:
>If you really want to test NSA.  Encrypt some crypto code
>with pgp in an overseas public key(IE: non-us) then email the
>code to someone out of the us.  This way you will find out 1 of 2
>things.
>       1.  That pgp is unbreakable by the NSA
>          - Rsa with fairly log keys take so much work the nsa
>            cant crack it with huge computers.  This is a good
>            thing

Nah, no possible result would tell you this. Perhaps PGP is "breakable", in
that it takes something like 30 seconds of their computer time to break,
say.  But even 30 seconds would probably be too much time to spend on
_every_ single piece of email that crosses national borders.