Wednesday, July 11, 2007

More Help Need: Louis Freeh's half hour

I'm trying to source a statement I make in the book I'm finishing up, but I don't remember where I saw it. It's something by Louis Freeh, back when he was the director of the FBI, to the effect that what they really needed was the ability to decrypt any message in half an hour.

Does any reader of this blog know if I am remembering correctly, and if so have a source for the quote?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found several references to Freeh testifying in support of the need to decrypt quickly, and several references to experiments trying to crack DES in 1/2 hour. Is it possible your recollection is an amalgam of these two stories?

Anonymous said...

Women want the "best mate" hence they care more about their relative value than their absolute value (although their absolute value create incentive in men to give better absolute value) thus polygyny can decrease the value of very desirable brides.

Shameless rephrasing of Patri Friedman's http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/11/22/progressives-for-polygamy/

Unknown said...

I've scanned through Louis Freeh's "My FBI" using amazon.com's excellent "Search Inside" feature, but couldn't find anything. It is probably not from the book (he doesn't even speak much of decryption in it).

Anonymous said...

Most I can say is that I remember it too. Maybe the Cypherpunk archives would hold something?

This does quote Freeh on the need for "real-time" decryption.