Hacker News Reader

There is some precedent for the NSA backdoors in commercial VPNs ...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_...

Backdoors were found in the devices/software sold to many governments, used by embassies and consulates all over the world.

Also keep an eye on http://cryptome.org. It looks like they're keeping track of redactions as well.

How did the difference come about? Did the Times and Guardian redact the documents themselves?

Yes. According to Reuters:

"The New York Times and ProPublica said they were asked not to publish their findings by intelligence officials who argued that their foreign targets might switch to newer forms of encryption or communications if the NSA tactics were revealed. 'Some specific facts' were removed, the New York Times said. The articles do not say which mainstream encryption systems have been effectively broken."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/net-us-usa-securit...