When I first started learning about the internet, network protocols, etc. from the guys at my first job I ask these question.
What’s the difference between 40 bit(France doesn’t allow any encryption over 40 bit) and 128 bit encryption? The amount of time it takes to crack it. 40 bit doesn’t take long. 128 bit takes a while.
So, if someone wanted to reconstruct the encrypted transmission between two computers on the Internet they only have to crack a 128 bit? No, each packet has to be cracked separately and that would take too much time. A packet only holds a tiny part of data.
In essence the little locks IE displays on bank pages, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, etc. rely on the fact that no one has the time it takes to crack the entire transmission. Even if you cracked it you would have to record it all and crack it later since nothing is fast enough to crack it as you go.
That brings up another issue of network routing. The little packets don’t go in order and don’t take the same route each time. This is why VOIP phones, video conferencing, and streaming web stuff suck. All those demand sequential delivery. A too late packet is worthless. You would need to record all or most of them to make sense of the communication.
I submit that the NSA seeks to record all the internet traffic in order to crack these encrypted messages and that they have 1 found faster ways of cracking 128 bit than is commonly known. This is based on testimony that members have come up with encryption technology years before non-members made it available to the public. And 2 that they have resources large enough to crack 128 bit in a reasonable amount of time. Days and not months or years as would generally be supposed. This is based on the number of massive multicomputer systems in the public domain used for genetic research and computer science research and the size of the government budget.
The information about traffic analysis if probably true, but is not the only reason for recording web traffic. The traffic analysis would give you a high level view. Then it would be nice to zoom in on specific transmissions and crack them to verify suppositions about the analysis or learn the contents of the message.
How would Americans feel if it was known the government was recording everything and could know the contents of every single message, encrypted or not? This would seem like the definition of a police state in which the populace is ignorant of the policing activity. How could this information be used? It’s frightening to think what would happen given certain intentions.