[Cryptography] RSA is dead.

[John Young]

At 06:31 PM 12/22/2013, you wrote:
Cyber threats are a place where defense really can work.  It is such 
a shame the US government chose to militarize the internet instead of 
making it safer for everyone.  Safer for everyone, they are too 
jealous for that.

Schneier and others are making the same argument. That is one
of the reasons to appoint a civilian to head NSA, leaving Cybercom
to the military. Recall that DoD resisted setting up Cybercom but
was bribed to do it by Congress which wanted it to be given
a military couture with concomitant secret budgeting propounded
by lobbyists of the giant defense firms eager to protect their
interests threatened by win down of GWOT.

Militarization of the Internet could harm the US more than a
foreign power by elevating suspicion not only about the US
but the entire Internet. That could then lead to Balkanization
into regional and national nets with border controls. That then
leads to paranoia and ethnic suspicion about incursions,
violations, chauvinism and cultural isolationism which the
Internet aimed to overcome.

Behind all this is excessive official secrecy driven by parochial
national security interests -- governmental, economic, industrial,
political, and social. Undergirding the secrecy is secret funding
for parochial ideology, that is, patriotism and chauvinism.

So it is not only the military and spies to be blamed, it is the
entire private enterprise, led by the financial industry, exploiting
sacred national security for pecuniary gain.

It takes little knowledge of history to know this is what leads
to war, not polite cyberwar and diplomatic tussling, but the
bloody kind usually called war profiteering.

To scapegoat and stimatize RSA as if it is the only opportunist
is folly. To scapegoat and stigmatize Obama and the spies
is greater folly.

And dangerous folly appears in the making in the run-up
to public debate about the piddling Snowden releases, arguably
being slowly released to sustain pubic interest. Withholding
the full stash of revelations is to be seen as placing narrow
interests over greater public good of full understanding of
the means and methods, in particular the technology,
of excessive global spying which is likely to worsen
threats to the world by 5-Eyes and 9 Partners while
being deluded that these are the only implementers
and exploiters driven by a global industry designing,
marketing and staffing (ie, Snowdens) spying technologies
subject to no national law, fundamentlly an industry of
outlaws.

Hackers are prosecuted for what this industry is paid
handsomely to do protected by secrecy, NDAs,
copyright, proprietary law, lack of ethics, immorality,
and collusion. Bloodthirsty patriotism, in short, the
very vampirism which has led to global war again and
again.