21st Century Wire says…
The United States spy-state has continued to grow since Edward Snowden first jumped into the lap of the Guardian…
Although Snowden’s revelations were detailed and in the public interest, the jury is still out regarding the authenticity of his maverick status. The political system wants the public divided over Snowden – while turning a blind eye to Snowden’s peculiar background, which could have been used as a legitimate operation to demonize whistleblowers, as well as help create a larger security apparatus.
Was Wikileaks used in a similar manner?
It’s really hard to get a grip on Snowden’s cult of personality, especially since Bradley (Chelsea) Manning was given 35 years for handing over information to Wikileaks that was also deemed sensitive in nature to the United States. We have been told by many proponents of the NSA that Snowden’s docu-dump was the most “damaging” thing to happen to the country’s national security.
If this is the case, then why has Snowden been used to polarize the masses and Manning denounced for his actions?
I’m not suggesting that the public shouldn’t be outraged by the NSA or other security agencies for their unconstitutional surveillance, I’m merely positing that we should try and look at all parts of this story as it continues to unfold, while making note of each new outcome.
The “Snowden Saga” as it has been dubbed, has provided a well placed back drop for the NSA to continue to advance its surveillance efforts by using Tesla technology. It has been revealed that the NSA has been building a quantum-based code-breaking super computer, an idea that was launched under Bush’s “total information awareness” program, a program that has been expanded in scope under Obama.
This new computer system will undoubtedly accelerate the concept called the “singularity,” a point at which artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, in addition to its envisioned encryption cracking capabilities.
On Friday, The NSA’s phone snooping program was quietly approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the 36th time in 7 years.
More from RT below…
NSA building a ‘quantum computer’ capable of breaking all forms of encryption
The National Security Agency is reportedly building a ‘quantum computer’ capable of breaking encryption used to protect the most vital records around the world.
The US spy agency is seeking an advanced-speed,“cryptologically useful quantum computer” that can bypass encryption that currently shields global banking, business, medical and government records.
The quantum computer is part of a $79.7 million research project called “Penetrating Hard Targets,” according to documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reported by The Washington Post. Much of the program is hosted in a College Park, Maryland laboratory under classified contracts.
Past Snowden-fueled revelations have shown the NSA has worked to deliberately weakencommon encryption standards.
Yet the NSA’s own technology capable of shattering all forms of public key encryption – including that which protects state secrets – is no closer to success than any other attempts in the scientific community, according to the leaked documents.
“The application of quantum technologies to encryption algorithms threatens to dramatically impact the US government’s ability to both protect its communications and eavesdrop on the communications of foreign governments,” according to one Snowden-leaked document.
The NSA appears to consider its efforts running at the same pace as competitors sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with incremental progress yet little hope of much of a breakthrough.
“The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document says.
The NSA did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
The documents indicate that the NSA runs some of the research in large, protected rooms designed to shield electromagnetic energy from entering or leaving and “to keep delicate quantum computing experiments running,” as one description goes.
The basic principle in quantum computing is “quantum superposition,” or the idea that an object simultaneously exists in all states. A classic computer uses binary bits, or zeroes and ones. A quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, that are simultaneously zero and one.
While a classic computer must do one calculation at a time, a quantum computer can achieve a correct answer much faster and efficiently through parallel processing, with no need to run those calculations.
A difficulty in quantum computing is that the particles that make up such computers must be carefully isolated from external environments.
“Quantum computers are extremely delicate, so if you don’t protect them from their environment, then the computation will be useless,” said Daniel Lidar, a professor of electrical engineering and the director of the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California.
A quantum computer would break the strongest encryption tools, including RSA, which scrambles communications enough to render them unreadable to anyone outside of the intended recipient, without using a shared password. RSA security is based on the extreme difficulty in finding two large prime numbers. In 2009, classical methods took almost two years and hundreds of computers to discover primes in a 768-bit number. Breaking the 1,024-bit encryption, standard for online transactions, would take 1,000 times longer, scientists estimated.
Quantum computers could home in on 1024-bit encryption much faster. And though such capabilities have a variety of uses, including the development of artificial intelligence, the NSA claims to fear the national security implications of not attaining the technology first.
READ MORE NSA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NSA File
SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
