alt.sci.physics

director for communications security
! said, "It is technically possible for the Government to read such
! messages, but it would be insane for it to do so. It would be an
! extraordinarily expensive undertaking and would require a massive
! increase in computer power."

Probably since noone believed that, they admitted it, and said why they
needed to decrypt in real-time:

# Encryption and Law Enforcement
#
# Dorothy E. Denning
# Georgetown University
#
# February 21, 1994
#
# To implement lawful interceptions of encrypted communications, they
# need a real-time or near real-time decryption capability in order
# to keep up with the traffic and prevent potential acts of violence.
# Since there can be hundreds of calls a day on a tapped line, any
# solution that imposes a high overhead per call is impractical.


And if uncrackable crypto were in widespread use within the ., the
FBI would demand that it be outlawed. For 'public safety and national
security'.

: * "Above the Law"
: * ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
: * by David Burnham
: *
: * The suspicion that the government might one day try to outlaw any
: * encryption device which did not provide easy government access was
: * reinforced by comments made by FBI Director Freeh at a 1994 Washington
: * conference on cryptography. "The objective for us is to get those
: * conversations...wherever they are, whatever they a