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The NSA has two mandates. First, it is to ensure that Americans are using secure communication channels. Second, it is to collect data. When these two things co
by 3pt14159 13y ago
The NSA has two mandates. First, it is to ensure that Americans are using secure communication channels. Second, it is to collect data. When these two things come into conflict they have the authority to make a decision. For centralized communication channels, for example, they will often help beef up security in exchange for the ability to wiretap.
If this bug was not caught by the NSA, then they are incompetent, something that I've rarely seen levelled at them as of late, but it is possible. If this bug was perpetrated by the NSA, then they are evil because they are exposing Nato and other allied countries to foreign attacks and corporate espionage.
Given the stakes, what they've said in the PRISM slides, and their history, I'd say evil is more likely than incompetent.
- rtpg 13y agoNobody caught this bug over two years (supposedly). Stranger things have happened. Also, while the NSA might have wanted to create this bug to exploit it, you still haven't shown that they created this bug. They might have known about it and exploited it, but saying they put the bug in the first place is a very strong claim.
- AnkhMorporkian 13y agoI'm not totally convinced that they even knew about it. If they had known about it, why bother going to the courts to coerce Lavabit to give up their SSL keys?
- ssmoot 13y agoWasn't that the FBI? If there were other means (blank-cheque warrants) to achieve their goals, it seems unlikely that the NSA would loop those agents in. Plus, would evidence obtained that way, without a warrant, even be admissible in any court? I mean, I guess this all went down after Snowden had left the country? So I'm not sure a court date was the end goal anyway. I'm fuzzy on the details/chronology.
- jessaustin 13y agoAny intelligence agency will prioritize source protection. Recall the efforts of the Ultra program in WWII: they sent out dummy reconnaissance planes to prevent the Germans from suspecting that Enigma had been broken. It's possible that the government already had the communications that Lavabit was trying to protect, but were putting on a public show so as not to reveal the brokenness of OpenSSL. See also "parallel construction".