On 6/23/2015 7:00 AM, Ofer Inbar wrote: > To me, the idea that it's "political" to use the US debt, is on its > face hard to believe or take seriously. So before everyone else has > to justify every other claim down to many levels of detail, can we see > any justification of the claim that there's any disadvantage to using > this convenient number, or that it's done for political reason? 1) zero evidence that this is an accurate source of entropy. There are modern alternatives: - treat Nomcom selection as something other than the securing of international resources, and use a seed based on the message ID of the first Nomcom announcement or such. - use a *true* source of entropy, such as quantum effects or energy noise. Two alternatives, based on these two effects respectively, already exist: http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ct/nist_beacon.cfm includes signed escrowed values from previous dates https://www.random.org/ this one has a list mode that can be based on previously generated values: https://www.random.org/lists/?mode=advanced The use of a true source of entropy would also obviate reliance on hash algorithms as well. Joe