Re: Any truth to rumor that NSA had Public Key Crypto first?

From: Bill Unruh (unruh_at_string.physics.ubc.ca)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: 29 Sep 2004 16:37:15 GMT

Damian Menscher <menscher+crypt@uiuc.edu> writes:

]Bill Unruh <unruh@string.physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
]> The NSA mathematicians are ordinary people, no different from the ones that
]> inhabit University Math departments. They work in a highly secret
]> environment with huge bureacracies and secrecy standards which severely
]> inhibit the free exchange of ideas, information etc. They have spent a lot
]> of time on the subject and have a large amount of accumulated expertise.
]> It would not surprise me at all if the outside community were ahead of NSA
]> now in a number of areas.

]It wouldn't? It would certainly surprise me if the NSA wasn't
]capable of reading the literature.

]Yes, the public might be caught up with the NSA. But I don't think
]it's possible to be ahead.

Sure it is. Reading the literature is not enough to make you competent in
the area. Thus, the public is almost certainly way ahead of NSA in quantum
crypto. Of course that may not matter, since quantum crypto is still pretty
useless as a practical area, but all the reading NSA does will not make
them into good quantum experimentalists.

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