ISO Rejects NSA Encryption Algorithms
schneier.com
schneier.com
I felt that tptacek's top comment in that thread was the best synopsis for the whole situation.
> I've already stipulated the politics of the story, which are deeply boring to me.
I'm not sure it's possible to be bored by "politics"-- i.e., to be bored by evidence from the Snowden leaks that the NSA is interested in pushing and has pushed kleptographic cryptography to undermine standards-- and be seriously engaged in a technical analysis.
It's like saying you're only interested in the code of the winning entry of the Underhanded C Contest, but not at all interested in the rules of the challenge. If someone's analysis under those circumstances is that the code looks like it does a fine job of completing its task, one should be skeptical.
He's not at all arguing that ISO is in the wrong to decline accepting the algorithms or that the politics don't matter; just that they probably didn't backdoor these 2 particular algorithms. NSA has voided all of their goodwill, no doubt, but that's not what he was addressing.
I imagine the cryptographers working at NSA who are genuinely trying to design secure, non-backdoored algorithms are very unhappy at how badly their organization shot themselves in the foot.