The film is from 1992, before the NSA was as well-known and infamous as they are today. Therefore, Dick Gordon (Timothy Busfield) gives us the exposition-heavy dialogue about what the NSA is/does. Martin plays dumb, allowing the exposition to happen. In Martin's line of work, he'd certainly know all of this. However, Marty's just been outed in a room of stuffed shirts for having roots in the counterculture. Marty's just busting Dick's chops. (He even pointedly switches to calling him "Dick".)
The same exposition-heavy scene introduces each of the main characters in the ensemble one by one, with each character in the background of his respective shot, out of hearing range. (How convenient that this takes place in a conference room surrounded by glass walls.) Notice that they're all oblivious to the fact that they're being talked about, except Whistler, the blind guy gifted with great hearing.
Wallace bristles at Bishop's insult, "I could have joined the NSA, but they found out my parents were married." (Played for laughs.) But wait, Wallace working for the NSA turns out to be a ruse, right? When Gregor helps Martin dig for answers, he helpfully points out that the reason Wallace is where he is — working for "good family men" — is that he was drummed out of the NSA.
Things don't go so well during the Martin-Cosmo reunion, ending with Cosmo spitefully ensuring Martin goes to prison. The next shot? Martin being tossed out of a car by henchmen, in the streets of San Francisco with Alcatraz in the background.
Werner's credit limit of $750 is pretty small for a man with a doctorate and 180 IQ who works at on the top floor of a high-power technology company, even for 1992. However, the gang characterizes him as "the most boring man on earth," not the kind of guy to make lavish purchases requiring high credit limits.
What Gregor tells Martin is strangely accurate years later: the basic math behind most common encryption in use at the time involves factoring large semiprimes (given a large number that's the product of two primes, it's difficult to factor them), as is the case with all RSA-encryption. Russian crypto algorithms, such as the real-world GOST, are based on completely different math, so the machine would be unlikely to solve them.
In the final escape from 'Playtronics', Martin gives Cosmo the fake answering machine. But then why didn't he swap it with the real thing when he first broke into the office? And why didn't they rig a fake chip that looked good enough on casual inspection?
