[..stuff deleted]
Oh, but can Big Brother afford such things in these times of tight
budgets?

I don't know how many folks noticed it, but Dorothy "Trust Me" Denning gave
a real clue to the current state of the art at NSA on decrypto machines when
she said the NSA told her they didn't even want to be the holder of any
part of the key.  

Now why is that?  I doubt there is a trapdoor in Skipjack.  (But we will
never know).  And I doubt the NSA would promote a mass market chip they
couldn't compromise.  Ergo, NSA is now capable of compromising (probably
with brute force keysearch) engines of the complexity of Skipjack.  Look
at the specs.  Why, I bet they have thousands of little chips chugging
away in their crypto busters... Maybe even tens of thousands.  Complexity?
Not much more than a 3090.  How many such machines will fit into Fort Meade?

I think PGP2.3 should have 256 bit IDEA keys...
