From: "Ian S. Nelson" <ian@bvsd.k12.co.us>
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 95 09:42:04 PDT
To: vznuri@netcom.com (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
Subject: Re: NSA says Joe Sixpack won't buy crypto
In-Reply-To: <199509040052.RAA25910@netcom10.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199509041641.KAA26589@bvsd.k12.co.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> but for some reason, the NSA keeps humming along...? perhaps 
> confirming the rule that bureacracies, like bores at parties,
> persist long after they are relevant?

Cryptography is a new science, it may be more effective to break in to an office
than to hack in to their computers, but maybe new discoveries will change that.

> understand marketing or human psychology. Clipper, the closest the
> agency has come to creeping out of the darkness of their coffin,
> was a total fiasco. the self-destructing director of NSA whats-his-name
> who as running for that FBI position or whatever is another example of how 
> the inbred spook society has difficulty dealing with anything outside
> their artificial reality.

I think you are dead wrong.  The NSA has mastered the market psychology.
Who has defined all of the most popular standards? DES, DSS, ElGamal, SHS...
the NSA has had a hand in them all.  DES is by far the most popular cipher,
popular enough that it will takes years and years to switch to something new.
As for the clipper "fiasco,"  I would argue that it was an excellent marketing
move.  The NSA is aware that there is only a very very small percentage of 
society the thinks about crypto, with the internet and what have you it is now
possible for this minority to be heard, the NSA proposes clipper, and so we all
bitch about it because it's only secure against non-government attacks.  Now
the public hears this and resists clipper.  There isn't another product that is
winning support that clipper could have had.  You step back and look at it, and
the public is exactly where they were 5 years ago, no crypto.  
Clipper was a no lose situation for them, if it is adopted only they can read
all transactions made with it, if it isn't adopted, everybody can read all 
transactions, they didn't lose anything. 
They have some top minds working for them, it's been proven that they have been
a few steps ahead of the public for a long time; it's foolish to think they 
don't understand the psychology of the market.  Just as the public starts to 
desire something like public key crypto, they can publish a standard on it
and it is likely to be adopted.