2 ms·

The nose at least seems to have a point. There is no claim that 'the government is weakening algorithms'. The claim is that the government is weakening implemen

The nose at least seems to have a point. There is no claim that 'the government is weakening algorithms'. The claim is that the government is weakening implementations -- 'applications and protocols' as you put it. He's speculating that proprietary vendors are hiding details about the break-ins because the details would show backdoors for the government. That seems plausible on the face of it. Or am I being too much of a conspiracy theorist? Half your comment is just ad hominem. He's mentioned no 'sources' in this article, and it's not clear why we should be 'worried'. It's not a great article, but your response is overblown.

tptacek 15y ago
The point of the comment is the ad hominem. Ad hominem is a fallacy when it's unwarranted and not germane to the argument. Cringely's lack of credibility is my argument. It's semantically void to point out that this amounts to "ad hominem". I'm responding to an article in which Cringely (paraphrased) asks "is 1024 and 2048 bit enough", answers "no", and then claims that if you fielded "4096 bit AES", the DoJ would come knocking. That Cringely doesn't understand what AES is is a minor point. That he doesn't understand the differences in capabilities between DHS, the DOJ, and NSA is less minor. That he thinks this has something to do with why we don't have IPv6 is baffling, all the more so because it appears to be the thesis of his article. That this hairy ball of cat barf and innuendo plays on our autonomic fear of a malicious government in order to score page views -- a play that devalues real concerns about misuse of authority, by allowing authority's defenders to cite nonsense like this article --- is contemptible. It deserves to be called out as such.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]