Re:The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can use...
by Michael_Murray on Friday September 06, 2013 @11:56PM
(#6343901)
This argument only works if you believe that there are enough people who understand the complexity and nuance within the system at a level sufficient to understand it.
It goes back to the design of DES - the NSA influenced small design changes in the SBoxes that had implications that only they understood. This gave an advantage, even though the algorithms were completely "open source".
In that case, they made the encryption STRONGER. But they certainly showed how that type of influence could happen.
I don't happen to be enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that they're messing with Tor - there are better ways, especially when a vast majority of the traffic isn't through Tor.
It goes back to the design of DES - the NSA influenced small design changes in the SBoxes that had implications that only they understood. This gave an advantage, even though the algorithms were completely "open source".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard#NSA.27...
In that case, they made the encryption STRONGER. But they certainly showed how that type of influence could happen.
I don't happen to be enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that they're messing with Tor - there are better ways, especially when a vast majority of the traffic isn't through Tor.