Re: The NSA (Was Re: Factoring - State of the Art and Predictions )

[Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>]

	A few weeks back Matt Blaze posted on top ten problems we
face.  I'll add two to that list.  First is our inability to
accurately assess the strength of various government agencies.  We
tend to make very pessimistic assumptions, which tends to be safe, but
having real data on which to base our assumptions would be better.

	The other problem we face is that people like Matt write solid
essays on various things, and no one responds.  People who write
essays, post solid mathematical results, etc, bemoan this pretty
regularly.  Fortunately, this problem is easier to address.  Try to
spend more time on the posts which people took longer on.  Its usually
obvious which those are.  The reason to spend more time on solid posts
is that someone took the time to write well on something.  If they get
solid feedback, they'll do more solid writing, and the quality of
discourse goes up.

Adam


Perry writes:
| The black community also has lots of day-to-day experience that we
| don't have, and they understand both the threat model and the
| practical side of things a lot better than we do.
| 
| Overall, I'd say that in the long run the open community is going to
| catch up regardless of what the NSA likes. That does not mean,
| however, that this is going to happen particularly soon, or that they
| don't still know decades more than we do.


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume