The NSA is hoovering up packets at AT&T switching stations and now they want to listen to some encrypted phone calls.

Here's my interpretation of the offer. They have no intention of paying for an attack. If somebody attempts to claim the reward they will say "Oh, no thanks, we don't really want your attack" and then rediscover the attack themselves.

The P2P nature of Skype makes it difficult to identify links of bad guys (or innocent guys that happen to be in the wrong place wrong time).

Listening in on calls isn't that useful - unless you know that "the goose flies south for winter" means we attack at dawn.

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/?cm_sp=sv|d...

But I like brl's interpretation...

Much easier to tap a few fibre optic cables (either with or without the cooperation of telcos) than to crack individual systems -- and the risk of discovery is much less, too.