The polite, friendly, retired gentleman could neither confirm or deny that life would get rather difficult if publication proceeded. (ie he wanted to make himself clear without stating directly)
I seldom get that kind of hint. I bet I would have published the damn paper, not because I'd felt it would be my duty as a scientist or citizen, but out of sheer obliviousness to possible consequences.
At the end of the paper there's a specific hint what was behind NSA's non-wilingness to be explicit, at that time, as Crypto AG from Switzerland is mentioned.
Wikipedia has some details about Crypto AG which are a good afterword to the DMR's article:
AFAIK, "Thus the current citation for it is
J. Reeds, D. Ritchie, R. Morris, "The Hagelin Cipher Machine (M-209): Cryptanalysis from Ciphertext Alone", unpublished technical memorandum, Bell Laboratories, 1978. Submitted to Cryptologia."
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] threadCould someone explain what Dennis means when he says this? I didn't really understand the phrase
Wikipedia has some details about Crypto AG which are a good afterword to the DMR's article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines
has been published in 2015:
http://cryptome.org/2015/12/ReedsTheHagelinCipherBellLabs197...