[Cryptography] An NSA mathematician shares his from-the-trenches view of the agency's surveillance activities

John Gilmore gnu at toad.com
Tue Sep 17 20:01:33 EDT 2013


Techdirt takes apart his statement here:

  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130917/02391824549/nsa-needs-to-give-its-rank-and-file-new-talking-points-defending-surveillance-old-ones-are-stale.shtml

  NSA Needs To Give Its Rank-and-File New Talking Points Defending
  Surveillance; The Old Ones Are Stale
  from the that's-not-really-going-to-cut-it dept
  by Mike Masnick, Tue, Sep 17th 2013

  It would appear that the NSA's latest PR trick is to get out beyond
  the top brass -- James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Michael Hayden and
  Robert Litt haven't exactly been doing the NSA any favors on the PR
  front lately -- and get some commentary from "the rank and file."
  ZDNet apparently agreed to publish a piece from NSA mathemetician/
  cryptanalyst Roger Barkan in which he defends the NSA using a bunch
  of already debunked talking points. What's funny is that many of
  these were the talking points that the NSA first tried out back in
  June and were quickly shown to be untrue. However, let's take a
  look. It's not that Barkan is directly lying... it's just that he's
  setting up strawmen to knock down at a record pace.

	John


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