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Now, I realize that, as an intelligence agency, NSA's core mission is to spy. Funnily enough, the NSA has a dual mission: spy on their communications, protect

Now, I realize that, as an intelligence agency, NSA's core mission is to spy. Funnily enough, the NSA has a dual mission: spy on their communications, protect ours. Now that everyone uses the same tech, one of those missions has overshadowed the other. Makes their weakening even harder to stomach, eh?

chiph 11y ago
Technically (yes, I am being that guy), their protection mission only extends to the DoD and selected US government agencies. Not to the general public or US business. That's done by NIST and the Department of Commerce. The NSA does occasionally cooperate with NIST on encryption matters, but that's fairly arms-length.
- Eridrus 11y ago
  > cooperate with NIST on encryption matters, but that's fairly arms-length Heh, you might want to read up on Dual_EC_DRBG. Technically you're right, and I think that people who claim that these missions are fundamentally at odds have not fully games out what options the NSA have; where they see fixing bugs as the only way to increase security, but despite their responsibility being technically only to the government, there has been quite a push for the NSA to help defend civilian networks too since they're being routinely targeted by nation state actors too, and the economic damage there is arguably worse.
Alupis 11y ago
> Funnily enough, the NSA has a dual mission: spy on their communications, protect ours. Even more funny, if the NSA succeeds one part of their mission, they fail the other. Therefore it's an impossible mission... so they've just seemingly resorted to only the spying part...
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
'Their' includes anyone outside of the NSA. Not just other nations. Not just normal US citizens and corporations. But also others within the US government.