Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[John Young]

A singular type of communication that the NSA is permitted by
law to collect and retain indefinitely, no matter the source, even 
if the sources are otherwise proscribed communications of US 
persons, is cryptographic data. So the use of encryption in
any form increases the odds that it will be collected and studied
and/or indefintely stored for future use. And if NSA does this 
surely do other nations' spooks.

Should end-to-end encryption become universal as Brian suggests,
the question arises of what would be singular data for the NSA
and like-snoops to collect and retain? Will it be all communication, 
along with burgeoning storage and sorting inventions such as NSA
brags it is feverishly developing (Bamford reports), or will other 
characteristics be used to single out special data (and now used 
to sort through increasing encrypted data)?

There are hints in the regulations governing NSA interception that
there are other means to identify special data other than its
cryptographic attributes. But only generic terms such as "technical"
are used for those hints -- that is, when the terms are not censored 
altogether as cryptographic and TEMPEST terms once were.

These musings come from a 1993 edition of NSA's USSID 18:

  http://cryptome.org/nsa-ussid18.htm

Presumably end-points of end-to-end encryption will be easily 
identified for black bag jobs of the CIA/NSA's SIS teams and
other nations' thieves -- or is it other nations' master bandits 
targets the US be breaking into just behind.