[ih] Eyes on the Internet?

[Bernie Cosell]

I'll add one little thing that has nothing to do with the original 
question [big help I am].

I worked on the PLI.  I got my clearance level bumped up and attended a 
meeting or two at the NSA.  The thing was to use a *real* military KG and 
all of the data was to be encrypted by have a wall between two "halves" 
of the IMP with the KG between them.  The problem, of course, is that the 
destination had to be passed in the clear.  That caused a HUGE problem 
for NSA: the prospect of the hot side of the IMP having a backdoor to 
pass data [even if only a little] to the secured side gave them *fits*.  
It took a bit of fancy dancing and hand waving [and I suspect pressure 
from Larry Roberts] to get them to agree. Of course, I had to clear the 
code and make sure it really couldn't be used as a real backchannel... 
but we did get it done.  I remember in one meeting where we were planning 
to deploy it: NSA said "no".  Larry said that it was *HIS* data and if 
they wouldn't approve he'd just declassify it.   They caved, and the PLI 
came into being.

Alas, I don't know anything about the NSA IMP.

  /Bernie\

-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--