

Documents Reveal N.S.A. Campaign Against Encryption - Nimi
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html

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jmccree
It could make one wonder if there aren't NSA employees working full time as
open source contributors to make sure open source encryption software (or even
OSes..) remains un user friendly and out of general use.

I would certainly prefer to believe the current state of the OpenPGP ecosystem
was due to malice rather than incompetence.

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lambda
It's possible, but not likely. Targeting proprietary, commercial vendors is
probably a lot easier than open source, as it's much easier to hide what
you're doing. And many more of the targets they are trying to attack are
likely buying fully supported solutions from commercial vendors, not COTS
hardware and installing open-source software themselves.

Even for open source software, it would be easier to just target the
integrator, such as the binary packages provided by the distro or preinstalled
on hardware by a system integrator, rather than introducing vulnerabilities or
causing problems in the upstream open source project.

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grandalf
How does the NY Times decide which aspects of the Snowden leaks story to cover
in a serious way vs a tabloidesque way?

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biscuitsandsc1s
Honest question: Which parts of their coverage of the leaks do you think were
covered well and which were covered poorly?

(E.g. do you think yesterday's encryption article was "tabloidesque"? Do you
like when newspapers post source documents?)

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jeremyflores
Possibly grandalf is referring to the Times publishing personal details of
Snowden and his activities abroad vs. the actual contents of his leaks.

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lambda
Well, until recently, they haven't had direct access to the leaks, so covering
the Snowden story or reporting on what the Guardian said were all they could
do.

However, ever since the British government forced the Guardian to destroy a
laptop containing leaked information, and detained David Miranda and
confiscated his belongings, the Guardian has decided to partner with the NY
Times, as they believe that the First Amendment, and American jurisprudence
surrounding it, still provides better protection of freedom of the press than
Britain's laws, so sharing information with the NY Times helps ensure that the
British government can't stop the reporting on this story.

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mumbi
aka propaganda

