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A comment on Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises N.S.A. Toolbox. Parent comment

Re: Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises N.S.A. Toolbox by joe_the_user on Sunday December 29, 2013 @03:45PM (#6981290)
The question is whether these exploits are accidents or the result of companies giving in to pressure from the NSA.

If the Snowden revelations are to be believed, at least some of the exploits were the result of giving into NSA pressure.

But the problem with this is that it breaks the chain of trust that a company has with it's customers. Once you know the NSA is applying pressure secretly to force some vulnerabilities to remain open, how can you know they aren't doing that with any given vulnerability.

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Re: Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises N.S.A. Toolbox by Spooky23 on Sunday December 29, 2013 @11:08PM (#6982986)
My guess is that it's all of the above. You're talking about a massive, compartmentalized organization.

I'm sure that different groups approach their data acquisition activities with multiple channels, if for no reason other than to prevent other NSA people from knowing about to what they are doing.

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