Re: [tlug] Unix's 40th Birthday

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

I have more or less reasonable answers to your other comments, but
this is the important one.

Curt Sampson writes:
 > On 2009-08-22 19:32 +0900 (Sat), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

 > > A third reason ... why do you think they fixed bugs in DES and
 > > released the fixes to the public?
 > 
 > That was a long time ago, in a different age. Do you think that twenty
 > years later the NSA wasn't aware what kind of security holes the were
 > introducing with Clipper? That was a complete about-face right there,

No, you're completely missing the point then.  It was not an
"about-face"; there have always been factions in the NSA (just like
any bureaucracy), and that time the "we need to catch the bad guys"
faction won.  It's quite possible that the DES fix and the recent
kernel fix are simply cases where a "it's better to protect our
assets" faction won.

I also suspect that both for the DES fix and the current kernel patches,
the NSA also happens to be in possession of ways to get what they want
in terms of information anyway.  They're not giving anything away, but
they are keeping information out of the hands of 3rd parties the NSA
would rather not have access to it.