[Cryptography] Now it's personal -- Belgian cryptographer MITM'd by GCHQ/NSA

[Jerry Leichter]

Commenting on only one thing in a long message:

On Feb 2, 2014, at 5:38 AM, ianG wrote:
> We can play the game of "you don't know that for a fact" forever, but at
> the end of the day, they will never enter court and let the court
> declare it a fact, so that easy excuse is their game, their rules, their
> victory.
And the alternative is ... what?  The witch hunt?  The mob?  Kill all, God will know his own?

It's so very easy to slip over the line, for (apparently) all the very best reasons.  That's what the intelligence community did.  The answer is not to slip over the same line.

The rule of law, the presumption of innocence - they are fundamentally based on the notion that we, as civilized members of society, will play fair, even when others don't.  We accept the costs because not to do so produce results that are even worse.

Granted, the rest of your message doesn't rise to the strident and dangerous call that this paragraph does.  But the urge is there.  It's there in all of us.

> Old military truism:  the battle is won by the general that imposes his
> plan over the other.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.  And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." - Nietzsche
                                                        -- Jerry

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