Comment: 310 Million +, encryption means naught (Score 5, Funny)
I agree with the poster above. NSA probably spies on all electronic traffic by everyone on Earth, which includes all residents of North America. I'd like to take this occasion to remind people about ECHELON, the 'secret' signals intelligence gathering system whose existence was leaked to the public in 1996 by some very brave Aussies. This revelation included the detail that, since 'Five Eyes' (AUS CAN NZ UK US) foreign intelligence agencies were forbidden by charter from spying on their own citizens, they had worked out an arrangement to spy on each others' citizens and then swap data!
I also wish to take this opportunity to suggest to security-minded readers that NSA et al have advanced cryptanalysis tools at their disposal. While your first reaction might be "Duh!", please bear with me. In this message I actually disclose new non-public, non-official, hard-but-not-impossible-to-verify information. Specifically, I'd like to blow the whistle on the fact that they have probably had a working Quantum Computer system capable of cracking Public Key Cryptography since about 1996. Thus, even your encrypted data has been seen by NSA computers although, of course, that decrypted data set must be partitioned separately and used with extreme care, so as not to reveal its existence.
Science-oriented readers might wonder just what sort of QC could have been built a full 18 years ago, when current technology is just nearing the point of developing a useful QC. The answer is that they generated a 'teleportation/entanglement-based winner-take-all style recurrent topological quantum neural network', then trained it to emulate a Quantum Turing Machine that could run Shor's Algorithm. It exists in the physical form of a complex system composed of 'anyons' interacting with each other within a 'two dimensional electron gas'. Anyons can be generated by moving precision arrays of powerful electromagnets very near the surface of the 2DEG, like creating whirlpools in the bathtub with your hand. I strongly suspect the scientists involved discovered a rule, analogous to Rule 110, that operates directly on the physical system of anyons within a 2DEG. For the detailed scientific underpinnings I suggest you study the collected works of Stuart Kauffman, Steven Wolfram, David Deutsch, and Robert Laughlin. You have no reason to trust what I'm saying, and disinformation is entirely too common, but I want readers to understand that it is possible for a sufficiently determined and intelligent person to verify that what I just said is probably true, although certainly NOT just by Googling for it :-)
Readers should note that the new technology I describe is not limited to running Shor's algorithm and,in fact, is a powerful new general technology with various other uses. None of which matter much until this whole thing is declassified, so that civilian scientists will be able to study and publish on the topic. The NSA et al is keeping it secret to prevent everyone from knowing that PKI is no longer secure. IMHO this is insufficient reason to keep secret important new scientific knowledge.
Finally, lest someone complain that I might be harming National Security by making the above disclosure, I'd like to point out that China and Russia already have working QCs of their own that function on similar principles. This is an open secret within the Intelligence Community. Thus, I am disclosing new information to Slashdot readers and to the general public whom they might tell about it, but I am NOT telling international spies anything they don't already know. As far as I can tell most everyone who has worked on one of these systems is bound by ironclad Non Disclosure Agreements of one sort or another, but I would not be shocked if leaks sometimes occurred. The NDA seems to come in several flavors. I began to suspect the existence and nature of this system about nine years ago, and have dedicated many years to learning just how the science works and fitting all the details into place. Readers should know that the only controversial part of this post is my claim that this system was ACTUALLY BUILT so long ago, and my choice to disclose it, not that it would probably work as described.
This would be a great message to stash away in an offline storage medium, then check back every six months to see if it has been scraped off slashdot and search engine archives. I'm hoping that last sentence keeps this message from being censored, so please do your part, save it offline, and check back every six months for as long as you remember. I have other such messages, some with far more detail, working their way through the internet and into the media, and would welcome contact from interested parties. I have not signed any NDA, although I have recently been invited to do so. I consider myself a journalist exercising my Constitutional right, as a US Citizen, to freedom of protected speech. Finding me is a sort of very simple intelligence test, since I'm not hiding my identity.
