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Anyone who falls for this kind of reasoning is incredibly naive. If you ever hear that somebody has a plan to have the best offense and make sure that everyone

Anyone who falls for this kind of reasoning is incredibly naive. If you ever hear that somebody has a plan to have the best offense and make sure that everyone else has the second-best defense so they're the only ones who can do something bad, the first thing that should come to your mind is that they are planning to do something bad. It's not an "will they" situation. It's a "can they" situation. If they have the capability, they will do it. That is a terrible plan. And don't tell me that they are on our side so it's okay. Secretive, crypto-state actors are on their own side. Ask yourself: if this power eventually falls under the unilateral control of the executive branch, will that always be a good thing under any conceivable future administration? Believing the justifications is extremely dangerous.

mcny 8y ago
This seems like a very easy problem to fix. We can split NSA into two and now the defensive people are not tainted by the people trying to break into everything. I mean the defensive people can focus on trying to secure everything, everywhere and against everyone including their former coworkers. Is this too naive?
- noir_lord 8y ago
  I don't think it's naive and would likely be better than the current system where the poachers are way more heavily supported than the gamekeepers. I mean it's not like division of intelligence agencies is anything new (FBI for counter-intelligence, CIA for foreign-intelligence etc). Of course to make it work you'd need a watchdog with actual teeth and historically the NSA has regarded oversight as well something they think they don't need or want.
- derefr 8y ago
  I think the practical barrier in the way of this is that one of the main ways the NSA “invents” new Suite A ciphers is by the cryptanalysis of cryptosystems of foreign militaries. The “defending the US” job is a consequence of the “attacking others” job; the crypto experts got to be crypto experts by breaking rival crypto. This is also, in large part, why these cipher suites are classified—not because declassifying them would make them easier to cryptanalyze; but because it would tip off foreign powers that the US knows how their crypto works! (And this is, of course, just as true of other weapons-systems development projects as it is of state-run cryptosystem developments.)

mcny 8y ago

This seems like a very easy problem to fix. We can split NSA into two and now the defensive people are not tainted by the people trying to break into everything. I mean the defensive people can focus on trying to secure everything, everywhere and against everyone including their former coworkers. Is this too naive?

noir_lord 8y ago
I don't think it's naive and would likely be better than the current system where the poachers are way more heavily supported than the gamekeepers. I mean it's not like division of intelligence agencies is anything new (FBI for counter-intelligence, CIA for foreign-intelligence etc). Of course to make it work you'd need a watchdog with actual teeth and historically the NSA has regarded oversight as well something they think they don't need or want.
derefr 8y ago
I think the practical barrier in the way of this is that one of the main ways the NSA “invents” new Suite A ciphers is by the cryptanalysis of cryptosystems of foreign militaries. The “defending the US” job is a consequence of the “attacking others” job; the crypto experts got to be crypto experts by breaking rival crypto. This is also, in large part, why these cipher suites are classified—not because declassifying them would make them easier to cryptanalyze; but because it would tip off foreign powers that the US knows how their crypto works! (And this is, of course, just as true of other weapons-systems development projects as it is of state-run cryptosystem developments.)