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RE: NSA response to key length report
What I don't get is why the "report" is so semi-literate? The grammar
errors are curious given the supposed source; it even makes me a little
skeptical as to the source.
My take on the bit about "high processing speeds -> I/O bound" isn't that
they're talking IPC, but bus timing (??)
I don't have the original paper handy and I don't recall what the proposed
processor speeds are.
"Total exhaust time" --- is this truly as meaningless as it sounds?
----------
From: Matt Blaze[SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 19, 1996 2:10 PM
To: Ernest Hua
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: NSA response to key length report
Ernest Hua <[email protected]> writes:
>
> It sounds like most of their "counter-arguments" are just stalling
tactics.
>
> If you are a lawyer for someone you know is guilty, you still would
choose
> to find every reason in the book to attack the prosecution's case. Here
we
> have precisely the same effect with the NSA. Any tactical manuveur to
keep
> stalling the impending collapse of ITAR.
>
> (It is human .. er .. rather .. bureaucrat-esque to claim innocence in
the
> face of overwhelming evidence of guilt.)
Particularly impressive is that our key length report was hardly
above criticism from several angles, but their rebuttal managed
somehow to avoid them.
What I find most disturbing about this is that their report was
provided secretly to policymakers in the administration and in
Congress, without independent technical review that would have
quickly exposed the fallacy of the arguments. I never would have
seen it had several of the recipients not faxed it to me. This is
the first hard evidence I've seen of NSA providing anything less
than the highest quality technical analysis to other parts of the
government. A non-specialist reader would be easily misled by the
technically dense, but completely irrelevant, "rebuttal". It smacks
of either ill-informed sloppiness, or, perhaps worse, self-serving
disingenuous cynicism. Either conclusion is scary, and, to me in
fact, quite surprising.
-matt