>to allow the British secret service to eavesdrop more easily. The British proposed a key length of 48 bits, while the West Germans wanted stronger encryption to protect against East German spying, so the compromise became a key length of 54 bits
>Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 state that the NSA "can process encrypted A5/1"
>Later provision was added to allow export of 56-bit encryption if the exporter promised to add "key recovery" backdoors by the end of 1998.
First SSL crippled to 40-bit RC2/RC4
First 802.11 wireless protocol WEP "64" key length shortened to 40 bits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1 vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/2
>to allow the British secret service to eavesdrop more easily. The British proposed a key length of 48 bits, while the West Germans wanted stronger encryption to protect against East German spying, so the compromise became a key length of 54 bits
>Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 state that the NSA "can process encrypted A5/1"