From: jim@tadpole.com (Jim Thompson)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 09:34:03 PST
To: thug@phantom.com
Subject: Re: Computerized OTP (was 5th AMENDMENT & DECRYPTION)
Message-ID: <9301261732.AA13574@tadpole.tadpole.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> From: thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug)
 
> Since none of us have ever been inside the NSA, we cannot underestimate
> their power and resources.  For all we know they may have 500 Intel Delta
> supercomputers linked together, each having 65,536 i860-XP/50mhz chips.
> We really don't know what kind of iron they possess.  Thus we can't assume
> that they can't factor extremely large numbers easily.

Um, I've been inside the NSA, (and I don't have a clearence.)  

They have a very nice visitors center, where they display some of their
more arcane technology, along with little placards explaining what the
hardware does.  For instance, they display a very nice looking u-wave
radio-based computer (complete with wax lenses), and a light-based
floating-point engine that develops God-only-knows how many hundres
Gflops, and yes, it can be custom programmed.  They display a RISC core
(of their own design) than also has a custom crypto unit on-chip, said
unit can be field re-programmed.  Also displayed are various arcane
(antique) crypto devices.

Jim

P.S.  Admittedly, I didn't get very far inside..