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Comment by mshron | Hacker News Reader

Ehhh... the term "adversary" is the standard term in any crypto paper or book for people who you are designing your system to be safe against. I'm very concerned about NSA overreach, but this is normal crypto terminology. It's true that this isn't quite algorithm design, but it's the most natural word I could imagine for such a scenario.

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Sure, it's a term of art for spies. That they're using it to apply to us is the problem.

Again, it's "the most natural word" because they are spying on and actively sabotaging us, our products, and our security.

This may be true but one presumes that NSA employees should be first of all public employees and only after all that should they be cryptographers.

A soldier is literally speaking a professional killer but a killer who's focus is very limited and specific. It's natural for soldiers to talk about adversaries. We should still be very worried if soldiers start thinking about American civilians as adversaries.

This was my first reaction. It's disconcerting to see in a nontechnical document, but for all that these leaks disturb me, "adversary" amounts to no more than "the people who might be trying to find out what you're doing."

No, the NSA document clearly states "consumers and other adversaries".

The adversaries are not the people trying to find out what you are doing. The adversaries are the people trying to password-protect their private files. We are the adversaries.

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