"Trei, Peter" wrote: > Why the heck would a government agency have to break the GSM encryption > at all?
Once upon a time, it used to be the favourite sport of spy agencies to listen in on the activities of other countries. In that case, access to the radio waves was much more juicy than access to the POTS. I've not heard anything explicitly on this, but I'd expect satellites to be able to pick up GSM calls. (One of the things I have heard is that the Chinese sold fibre networking to Iraq, and the Russians sold special phones with better crypto. Don't know how true any of that is.) Also, the patent issue will work very well in countries where there are laws against hacking and cracking and so forth. Rather than have such laws subject to challenge in the supreme court, a perp can be hit with both patent infringement and illegal digital entry. The chances that anyone can defeat both of those are slim. (OTOH, I wonder if it is possible to patent or licence something that depends on an illegal act?) iang --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
