Re: NSA, Random Number Generation, Soviet Codes, Prohibition of Crypto

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>]

Black Unicorn writes:
> More interesting than all this was the discussion with the deputy 
> director of the NSA in which he described the communications 
> collections program which continued from the 1950's all the way 
> into the 1980's.

There may be a misunderstanding -- just to be clear, the implication
was that they were working on some of the 1950s traffic into the
1980s, and not that there was any new traffic available of late...

> In any event, it is safe to assume that the NSA has a very large 
> section dedicated to this entire pursuit, and moreover, that the 
> Soviets probably were not "petty" random number generators.  

I've heard that standard 1920s-1950s one time pad generation
techniques involved telling lots of secretaries in the code section to
type numbers at random onto carbon paper forms. No joke.

Perry