And just to forestall obvious retorts based on Bitcoin and any and all other brilliant, game changing systems conceived of and implemented by small teams: That

And just to forestall obvious retorts based on Bitcoin and any and all other brilliant, game changing systems conceived of and implemented by small teams: That such teams can change the game, can occasionally create things sui generis, does not in any way diminish the possibility of a large, well funded, well staffed, and incredibly well resourced organization like the NSA from either having access via a) other channels (all crypto runs on hardware eventually, and all hardware gives out heat and makes noise - even if our ears cannot hear it; learn enough about waste emissions from hardware and you figure out what's going inside - and that's just one vector in the compute channel, let's not forget there are socially engineerable and occasionally corruptible people involved too!) or b) direct attacks on the crypto and other masking technologies themselves, because these guys - the NSA, I mean, keep up :-> - may just know that much. I've never worked directly in areas that would give me first hand knowledge of any of the above (and I had, I would likely be committing a crime writing this) but I have worked long enough and deeply enough in adjacent areas to have an inkling of just how powerful an adversary (in the technical threat-risk-assessment sense) the NSA is. Or may be. So to say that your latest weekend project is somehow proof against them? Hmm, I tend to, uh, at least dubiousness ("Well, have you considered this vector, and this combination of catastrophic failures?"), if not directly to outright scoffing ("Mwa ha ha, you're so sweetly naive, have a biscuit"). I tend not to worry about the NSA and others of their ilk because none of my shit is worth enough or is interesting enough to be of value to them. In aggregate? Who knows, good question. I tend not to worry about that either, though, because I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of other more interesting fish. I do worry about the potential erosion of civil liberties, but so long as we have the EFF and Michael Geist, I tend to feel a bit better and worry less.