[cryptography] regarding the NSA crypto "breakthrough"

[John Young]

More words from a non-techie:

David Kahn, James Bamford, Seymour Hersh and quite
a few NSA and other spy types, in particular heads of
agencies, Congress, POTUS. SCOTUS, DoJ, are word
people. So try as they might to match a word account to
the coders and mathematicians, it's pretty well impossible.
And the reverse is true from the techies to the wordies.

Not many hard core cryptographers are persuasive wordies,
so the wordies often run the public show, in the same way
the hard cores runs the labs and hacker blow-outs with
wearable computers and fuzzy PowerPoints of what a
literate person would see as alphanumeric wallpaper.

Keep in mind that even many of the reputable tech reporters
are not all that techie but are adept at using words lifted
from tech drunken orgies. Same in my field of archtecture:
the highly literate architectural critics know squat of the
down and dirty but excell at reaching the public with
artfully simulated accounts burnishing reputations of
marketable greatness.

In the case of NSA, be damn sure that all its heads
knew or know squat about NSA deep tech so they are
suited to move the product in blissful ignorance to
customers of similar know-not. Michael Hayden and Keith
Alexander are perfect for using vapid words to persuade
non-techies as little truth as possible is just fine.

Back to the latest failure to reveal technical docs.
Those who know what's important about them
are not likely to tell journalists that, may be incapable
of doing so in a way that journalists can apply
their vaunted skepticism of sources -- using word
skills of truthiness. So what is transferred are
narratives, stories, rhetoric, bombast, in lieu of
technical specs, math, algorithms, fabrication
drawings, chemical and electrical formulations,
doses of EM and anti-EM just precisely zapped
to the nano-fullerine /->^256/1029: the myrrh and
honey of technies, sleep-eeze to the wordies
who yawn is that a go or no go to slick brochure
printing.

"Breakthrough" is PR, which might suggest quotation
marks around all the NSA revelations -- so far. A long
shot that technical docs will be leaked inadvertently,
maybe left as digital debris inside one of the PowerPoint
files put on a reused thumb drive and recoverable
in a filthy techie lab. I think Ross Anderson could siphon
and decipher that compromising junk in a flash.

Ross is pretty good at no-nonsense English too.