This sounds suspiciously like modern context being retrofitted to an ancient story.. there were (and still are) much bigger problems in GSM than just the cipher in use, say for example, that phones do not authenticate the network, and the network dictates the handset's encryption mode.<p>It seems curious that the intelligence community would be so vocal in such a directly attributable manner when simpler means of interception exist, and when many other reasons could be given for reducing the key size (e.g. cost seems an obvious one, given we're talking about the 80s here), not to mention that A5/1 itself had major flaws that puts it on the level of WEP in terms of the ease with which it could (and still can) be cracked.