[liberationtech] NYTimes and Guardian on NSA

[Ximin Luo]

On 05/09/13 21:10, Richard Brooks wrote:
> 
>> There is a massive difference between cryptanalysis and decade-long,
>> well-funded, and top-secret program to subtly weaken international
>> cryptographic protocols and sabotage industry implementations.
> 
> 
> Their job is to collect information for the military. That their
> work is top-secret should be obvious. That they try to weaken
> the crypto not used by the military and US gov. should also be
> taken as a given.
> 

You missed his point. "subtly weaken international cryptographic protocols and
sabotage industry implementations" would be like selling vehicles / buildings /
food with a secret back-channel to the US government to hijack / self-destruct
/ poison the eventual consumer, during peacetime, and to allies.

The NSA does not have a mission to do anything it wants, and you have a
fundamental misunderstanding of the world, and ethics, if you think that it
does, or that it should.

> I'm not necessarily in favor of the NSA doing this, I just find
> some of the shocked outrage silly. It should be obvious that the
> cryptanalysis people work at breaking codes.
> 
> (Spying on domestic communications, on the other hand, used to
> be strictly forbidden for good reasons. Among other things, you
> do not want intelligence and counter-intelligence to be friends.)
> 
> (Keeping long-term records of domestic communications, is another
> thing that you do not want the intelligence service doing. Their
> are too many temptations for abuse.)
> 

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