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Comment by wil421 | Hacker News Reader

I use one of these tokens for work. Spying is one thing but destroying encryption is another evil thing to do. If the NSA has introduced bugs in crypto then who's to say someone else can exploit the same crypto.

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i wonder if Snowden has any detailed info on the NSA indroduced/forced backdoors (he obviously was aware about their existence in general like pretty much everybody in the world who isn't a tptacek's religious follower) and this or something like this is what keeps him alive - ie. NSA is afraid of dead man switch while other side(s) hopes that Snowden will reveal more and specifically useful for actual hacking info with time.

so that's the thing that scares me

a nsa official just did an obvious trial-balloon of pardoning snowden in exchange for return of all the docs [1]

but now that snowden is in russia, you have to assume that many nation-states have seen all these docs. so really, the nsa is worried that you and I will see them

fucking amazing

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/nsa-edward-snow...

The conditions for the pardon have never made sense, because as I understand it Snowden has already shared most if not all of his information with at least Greenwald and Poitras. He no longer has control over what will be shared with the public.

This is one of the many issues people have with what the NSA is doing. Weak crypto means not only the NSA can exploit it but possibly many other criminals.

I don't think this fiasco is related to the tokens but yes the tokens has other problems such that it didn't need NSA to break it.

I wasn't sure I skimmed half the article. It did have a giant image of one the tokens though.

It's a bad image, because it conveys an idea that's different from the story, but I can see why they used it -- from the general public's perspective the tokens are pretty much the most recognizable symbol of RSA.

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