CDR: Re: Musings on AES and DES

[John Young]

Vin wrote:

>         It will be interesting to see how explicit it is, and what sort of 
>demand for an overt stamp of approval from the NSA still exists in the 
>marketplace.

NIST has stated that the maximum endorsement will be to use
AES for non-classified government information. So the question
will remain of what is better than AES, or to put it another way,
what is not good enough about AES for its use on classified
information.

To be sure it would be too much to expect that the USG would
promote a program that it could not penetrate, or to put it another
way, to openly disclose a technology it believes to provide
maximum data protection. If NSA/NIST went that far the agencies
would be shut by DC for national security reasons.

Still, one can dream of NIST/NSA slipping through a technology
stronger than the ordinary officeholding paranoid, secrecy-loving
power mongering goofus can prevent by way of elastic oversight
technology.

David Alvarez writes of the intel agencies withholding most secret
information from the president in the 30s and 40s on the belief that
that office could not be trusted to put the nation's interest above its
own urgencies to endure.

What a wonder it would be to read in say, 25 years, that NIST/NSA 
raced a fast one past their watchers and advanced the public's
interest over the government's. Lots of those folks are looking
forward to becoming well-paid ex-govs, having seen what 
lucrative benefits have come the way of those who jumped ship.

Is it conceivable that the USG's need for maximum protection of
its information would take second place to the need of the public's
protection from government? That depends on what government
workers -- especially the defense establishment defined by
Eisenhower -- believe their future to be.

The burgeoning market for dual use technologies is surely
going to change the way globalism gets implemented, now that
so many of those who fostered those technologies are coming
into the marketplace as hungry players, not merely underwriters 
and regulators. This applies not only to the the former Soviet
Union and the US best minds who are fed up with their bosses'
maximum perk protection.

Davidge's expose of Tennant is instructive of how the unders
apply payback to the uppers who cannot believe NDA's and
third-class pensions no longer control intellects once with
no where else to thrive than as national servants.