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The NSA's track record here is mixed, so I'm not sure how to feel. They actually improved the design of DES.

> Bruce Schneier observed that "It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 'tweaks' actually improved the security of DES."

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I got curious and found the post you were referring to (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/the_legacy_of...). They tweaked the algorithm, and that tweak turned out to make it more secure; they also cut the key size by more than half, making sure they could brute force it. That doesn't exactly scream benevolence.

All they did was make sure breakable-by-them encryption was in use much longer than it should have been. I'd hardly call it a mixed track record.

> However, the NSA also ensured that the key size was drastically reduced such that they could break it by brute force attack.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard

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