Liam David Gray <lg2g+@andrew.cmu.edu> said:
Nobody, when I read the original post I assumed the "we" you're talking about was 'we, the Cypherpunks.' I.e., if NSA were truly Evil Incarnate Central, the Cypherpunks would be fighting "a Valiant War ["We Are Fated to Lose"]".
Righto. If you're going to be paranoid, you may as well read more carefully. The message in question was unambiguous; there were no Freudian slips in it. Like I said recently, the NSA wouldn't be doing their job if they weren't following an obvious list like this. But you can trust them not to be completely moronic. Information gatherers are likely to be complete lurkers, and if they go for agent provocateurs, they'll likely be selected and trained well enough to avoid IQ 80 slipups. I've known NSA employees and contractors in the past and present. Nothing regarding ultra secret work, else I'm sure I'd never have known about it, nor gotten involved, etc. But still, it's just another government agency, with a big budget, fingers in many pies, and with perhaps a higher than average individual and collective intelligence (no pun intended) from what I've seen. The NSA even goes to some open technical conferences; sometimes they even host one (on more mundane computer matters, of course). There's every reason to think that they're merely watching the situation to see what happens. I doubt if they've even seen reason to put other agencies like the FBI on alert. But if anything, if you want to be paranoid, be paranoid about folks like the FBI and SS and Justice Department. They'd be the ones to move in for the kill, you know, if anyone thought there was reason to do so. If you *must* be paranoid, just assume *I'm* from the NSA. I'll even claim to speak for them. (I'm fairly sure I won't be contradicted. ;-) Ok, here goes: "play nice, kids." There, a pronouncement from the heart of Evil Incarnate Central. :-) Doug