Another recent one is PGP encryption. Read about Phil Zimmerman's decade of fun with the DOJ for creating it and not allowing a NSA backdoor. http://www.philz

Another recent one is PGP encryption. Read about Phil Zimmerman's decade of fun with the DOJ for creating it and not allowing a NSA backdoor. http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/faq/index.html http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/faq/index.html I have done some crypto work for financials and trust me if you aren't using an RSA algorithm then you get lots of questions and notice. The NSA can neither confirm nor deny that they have trapdoors/backdoor access into RSA encryption. But if you don't use it they get very anxious to know what you are up to. http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2316 http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2316 As the premier cryptographic government agency, the NSA has huge financial and computer resources and employs a host of cryptographers. Developments in cryptography achieved at the NSA are not made public; this secrecy has led to many rumors about the NSA's ability to break popular cryptosystems like DES (see Section 3.2), as well as rumors that the NSA has secretly placed weaknesses, called ``trapdoors,'' in government-endorsed cryptosystems. These rumors have never been proved or disproved. Also the criteria used by the NSA in selecting cryptography standards have never been made public. They came down on Zimmerman to help dissuade others from creating more encryption algorithms. This could be because they have control over others or they simply want to limit the resources needed to break each type of encryption.