On what the NSA does with its tech

[Major Variola (ret)]

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?