I think that's a reasonable assumption. But even if it is wrong and the NSA has a shortcut.... And even if that shortcut affects all implementations of all cy

I think that's a reasonable assumption. But even if it is wrong and the NSA has a shortcut.... And even if that shortcut affects all implementations of all cyphers.... 1) expensive is still relative. Even if there is a short cut it may be only feasible to decrypt a small part of encrypted communications. So they may have to prioritize. 2) If everything is encrypted, they may still have to start somewhere. so yeah, it's not a bad assumption even if it is wrong. Speaking of which, https works with HN, not that this likely matters much.