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I don't see what the NSA revelations have to do with this line of reasoning.

How do we know you're not (and have not been) selling tarsnap data to a corporation or non-US intelligence agency? This has always been a possibility and it has roughly equal probability to you being an NSA agent even after the Snowden leaks.

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I don't see how you don't see a relation.

You assume he is, then you read the source of the client that is sending the data, and verify that it's not. You trust the code, not the person. That's the TLDR of the article.

Also, since there is no downloadable binary, you must compile the code yourself.

Note that anyone who can't read code has to trust the person. I guess they should be trusting a person who has read the code? What happens if you don't personally know any software developers?

What happens if you don't know any civil engineers? Do you stop driving over bridges?

Bridges don't secretly collapse. And an overt collapse due to a serious, government-mandated secret weakness in design or construction leading to the revelation that a large portion of a "free" country's transportation infrastructure suffered from similar secret weaknesses in the name of national security would be a scandal of government-shattering proportions.

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