Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
Faustine:
> > > I think it's dangerous and entirely to your disadvantage to 
> > > dismiss everyone doing government work in computer security
> > > as a donut- chomping incompetent Barney-Fife-clone
> > > imbecile.
> > >
> > > Anyone can laugh at the department heads on C-SPAN, but did
> > > you  ever stop to think about who's really doing the
> > > hardcore research for the NSA at Ft. Meade--and elsewhere?

James A. Donald:
> > To judge by their most recent crypto ballsup, some donut
> > chomping incompetents.

Faustine
> That's just as inaccurate as condeming everyone who ever worked
> for Microsoft as clueless because of their corporate propensity
> for security lapses. You wouldn't go that far, would you?

Microsoft, as a whole, is incompetent at security.  All
supposedly secure software coming out of Microsoft varies from
poor to worthless.  Does anyone doubt it?   They take standard
well known methods and make well known bungles in applying it and
customizing it.

We do not get to see much of the spook output.  What we have seen
in recent years is not good.

During world war II the government sucked up all the best people
from the open sector, and put them to work in the secret sector.
For example most of the words greatest scientists wound up hand
making nuclear weapons.   However, one would expect, with the
passage of time, that people who work in secret would suffer from
Parkinson's law, and this appears to be happening.

> I know of an old-school NSA red teamer who's been teaching
> programming and engineering since before either one of us was
> born. An honest-to-god mathematical genius. Some of those old
> wizards could teach us all a thing or two. But whether the
> donut-chomping incompetents have the upper hand is anyone's
> guess. I wouldn't bet on it in the long run.

I would bet on it in the long run.  It is inherent in the nature
of government.  Without the market weeding out the unfit and
pressuring everyone for excellence, bureaucracies unavoidably
decay for well known reasons.

Microsoft produces crap security because most of their customers
do not know any better.  Therefore NSA will produce crap security
because their customers are forbidden to know any better. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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