Elliptic Curve Cryptography Explained
I don't have much experience in cryptography, so this may be a stupid question, but I've always wondered about whether Elliptic Curve cryptography opens up some possibilities for  partially decentralizing encryption standards.<p>My understanding is that end-users of ECC have to decide which curves to use, and constructing a curve de-novo isn't a choice laymen or crypto end-users should ever make, so a set of standardized curves are issued by standards bodies, such as NIST.<p>Cryptographers endorse the math of ECC as not known to be decipherable, provided that the chosen curve (defined eg by 4 points) isn't specifically constructed to be easily compromised; and the problem becomes whether the curve-issuing standards bodies, such as NIST, are acting in the interests of state security agencies (for argument's sake, lets say  NSA) who have vested interests in crypto users adopting curves that NSA can  break.<p>Could an international, decentralized curve be constructed by standards bodies from several geopolitical adversaries such as US, China, Russia and Turkey all simultaneously issuing 1 point each to create a combined 4-point curve, so that no single standards body has opportunity to purposely make the result insecure?