I don't know what our beliefs about key escrow have to do with the reality that NSA's "impenetrability" isn't part of the prevailing narrative. Among experts, the gauge on NSA is trending strongly towards "clownshoes".
Most on hacker news or security twitter or slashdot or whatever would agree that the NSA has serious vulnerabilities and have terrible policies/practices, but the narrative being pushed to the average american via the usual channels is most assuredly that the NSA is infallible (or that it's only fallible due to pesky things like privacy).
This article is on Reuters, which means it wasn't meant for people who know what elliptic curves are, it was meant for people who still call Comcast to restart their router. Given that, I think it's safe to say there's a distinct narrative being pushed here where it's heavily implied that leakers are the main threat to the NSA's security.
> "The NSA is impenetrable" is not and was not the prevailing narrative, to say the least.
Our opinions about key escrow have nothing to do with whether Russia hacked an NSA staging server, or another leaker inside NSA is behind the leak.
tptacek: "The NSA is impenetrable" is not and was not the prevailing narrative, to say the least."
me: I disagree; it's part of the narrative that pro-surveillance people use to support things like "collect it all" and key escrow
tptacek: I don't understand what our beliefs about key escrow have to do with the narrative
me: explains again what you're missing about how this relates to the pro-key-escrow (and more generally pro-mass-surveillance) narrative
tptacek: everybody agrees key escrow is stupid, and our opinions about key escrow have nothing to do with things that you weren't discussing like where the leak came from
me: hmm ...
It's almost like you're trying not to hear what I'm saying.
OK, one more try.
If all the experts you talk to are against key escrow, why do pro-mass-surveillance folks keep proposing it? They see the tradeoffs differently. And why's that? One reason is that the stories they tell about why it's a net positive have the underlying assumption that there's not a significant risk of they keys being compromised. Conversely and when opponents of key escrow tell stories about the potential downsides if the keys are compromised, proponents downplay this as a risk.
Perhaps because what you're saying is/sounds off-topic? Basically it amounts to "some (pro-mass-surveillance) folks propose X because Y". Even if that's true, so what? To repeat the GP, this has nothing to do with whether Russia hacked an NSA staging server, or another leaker inside NSA is behind the leak.
Really? That's interesting (and funny!). Can you elaborate? What in particular regarding NSA points towards clownshoes?