24 August 2013
Snowden Induced Mea Culpas
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 17:33:30 -0400
To:
<cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org>,<cryptography[at]randombit.net>,
<cryptome[at]freelists.org>
From: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com>
Subject: [cryptography] Snowden Induced Mea Culpas
Comsec experts should not be surprised at the Snowden revelations about NSA
so far, most of which are venerable.
What is surprising is their seemingly exaggerated surprise because many of
them worked at or ran firms which were known to be heavily involved with
official spying through dual-use technology and dual-purpose contracts.
With USG and world governments, with banks and telecoms, with comsec, software
and anti-virus firms, with universities and research institutes, with FOI
organizations and public interest advisory boards, with vulture investors,
TED and Aspen, with revolving doors among goverment, industry, education,
journalism, banking and Wall Street, with RAND, NRL, the national laboratories,
to name a few.
In most instances these dual roles were not hidden. Or were they?
What might be troubling about Snowden's possible revelations that is causing
exaggerated surprise of these experts is the disclosure that the dual-uses
and dual-roles in spying were more extensive than has been made public. That
has been protected by highest secrecy about to be breached, not about the
spy agencies but those used to camouflage and assist the spying by downplaying
its pervasiveness by selling protection that could never be wholly effective,
that the cybersec game was as rigged as gambling.
That the backdoors, vulnerabilities, holes, faults, and errors were more
craftily hidden and exploited with the complicity of the best and brightest
while they deluded the the public for market share and FOI fame. That it
was a charade to agitate for more security and privacy while undermining
them. That Snowden has the documents about that ancient betrayal and will
at some point make them available. That it would be wise to get ahead of
this exposure by rushing to claim the spying has been greater than even we
experts knew and comsec is a fraud by design. Crypto-AG the norm.
Crypto-AG article, 1995.
http://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-sun.htm
Rigging the Game
By Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun Staff
Spy Sting: Few at the Swiss factory knew the mysterious visitors were pulling
off a stunning intelligence coup -- perhaps the most audacious in the National
Security Agency's long war on foreign codes.
[Scott Shane, currently with the New York Times, is reportedly working on
a series about the Snowden NSA documents provided to the Times by the Guardian.]
http://cryptome.org/nsa-sabotage.htm
A pocket guide to NSA sabotage
|