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Comment by freejack | Hacker News Reader

What makes me absolutely, terribly sick is the extent to which the USG waves its hands to dismiss the seriousness of the extent and reach of the NSA's domestic data gathering activities and at the same time deciding that Swartz's data gathering was worth going to the mat over.

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The USG also claims it's wrong for people to shoot each other all while maintaining an army of hundreds of thousands of people empowered to do exactly that, and worse, in the right situations.

When "we" decided to grant the government a monopoly on violence, there was nothing in the contract about letting them hack and sabotage American computer systems or commit other crimes at will.

Has NSA sabotaged American computer systems? Most IP 'pirates' seem quite willing to claim that copying data is not at all destructive, and the NSA can make similar claims.

But either way, "we" also didn't put anything in our "contract" that let them make nuclear weapons, air forces, computer inter-networks, or social security/welfare programs.

Do you not consider this[0] evidence of them sabotaging cryptography systems?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118

In the context of NSA specifically, not really; the algorithm is meant to be secure for all uses except against NSA. I've noted before that I disagree with NSA's actions here but this isn't a case of them shipping crypto with a backdoor that anyone could target (contrary to the claim of the top comment from your link, only NSA could break the crypto in Dual EC DRBG).

Suppose I take your claim that "only the NSA could break [it]" on good faith.

You're missing the word "presently."

That back door is there. Others not having figured out how to interact with it yet is a matter of security through obscurity[0], and the system is still weaker for it, even though it's not yet fully cracked.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

You are confusing monopoly of violence with monopoly on private data. Unless private data is a weapon.

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