Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti, a German reporter with
Telepolis who checked on the initial "decoding" of the
Stasi archive in February 1999, writes that the decoding
was technically not decryption but instead consisted of
converting old code into one that could be emulated
on a PC, comparable to decompression in difficulty.
She says this came from the main agency responsible
for German crypto matters, BSI, which had advised the
Gauck Department. See her February report:
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/1800/1.html
She knocks Der Spiegel for sensationalizing the work
as breaking a cryptosystem.
If there is another view on this work we'd appreciate hearing
about it. That a portion of the archive was decoded only
recently seems to indicate that there was something about
it unlike the initial package. Perhaps a cryptosystem that
BSI does not want to admit it knows how to crack, and one
the CIA/NSA may be hammering on.
