NIST temporarily closed — will that have a negative impact on the future of cryptography? For those who didn't notice yet, in the USA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) has been shut down temporarily because of the poor fiscal situation of the USA.

The text at their site reads:


  NIST Closed, NIST and Affiliated Web Sites Not Available
  
  Due to a lapse in government funding, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is closed and most NIST and affiliated web sites are unavailable until further notice. We sincerely regret the inconvenience.
  
  The National Vulnerability Database and the NIST Internet Time Service web sites will continue to be available. A limited number of other web sites may also be available.
  
  Notice will be posted here (www.nist.gov) once operations resume. You may also get updates on NIST's operating status by calling (301) 975-8000.
  
  Conferences and other events scheduled during the shutdown are postponed or cancelled. Even after NIST reopens, some NIST events may need to be rescheduled. Once access to NIST Web sites resumes, please see the Conferences and Events (http://www.nist.gov/allevents.cfm) list for updated information on specific events.


Here's a screenshot of the NIST website (2013-10-02T12:00:00Z):



On the positive side, I could imagine more people coming to Crypto.SE as a result of that.

Anyway… even though it was tempting, I want to avoid "asking for opinions" so I am not going to ask how reliable and trustworthy NIST is, when looking at the fact that government funding obviously has a huge impact on them. Still, a question remains: 

What impact will the closure have on the future of cryptography? (think: "crypto-development")
This closure is a rather stupid thing, because the Web site is not closed: indeed, there still is a machine, somewhere, which responds to HTTP requests and returns the "we are closed" page. It would have cost zero effort, and zero extra money, to simply let the Web site run and keep on serving PDF files.

For crypto development, this means that until the US Republicans and Democrats finally agree on who is the Alpha Male, developers will need to find the relevant standards and test vectors elsewhere. A lot of the information is duplicated elsewhere; e.g. FIPS 180-4, which defines the SHA-* functions, has also been copied as RFC 6234, which is still available. Also, many people already have copies of the documents they are working on (I know that my "Downloads" directory must have a lot of NIST pdf files in it).

In any case, crypto development, by necessity, works at the pace of research, with a lot of thinking. Thinking has not stopped. Publication of documents, writing of standards, organization of meetings... operates on a time scale counted in weeks or months, not days. A few days of bureaucratic-induced closure is not enough to show up on the big picture of cryptographic advances.