NSA Old-School Spying

While the recent revelations from Snowden have put a spotlight on the efforts of the NSA to spy on seemingly everything, one of the surprising results is that those that were labelled ‘paranoid’ and dismissed in years past no longer seem paranoid enough.

I give an example of a joke from 1995 (so almost 20 years ago):

The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you’d like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one.

via the Usenet archives