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Like, I am NOT a fan of the NSA, in the same way that I'm not a fan of Meta, Palantir, and the data broker industry.

Surveillance is bad for society. Privacy is good for society. Using technology to undermine privacy and surveil people is a bad thing, actually. And while the official story is roughly that NSA only spies on other governments, and not innocent civilians, we have no way of knowing if that's true. And there's no way in hell I'll ever trust that.

So, like most cryptographers, I'm squarely in the "Fuck the NSA" camp. Just like I'm in the "Fuck the FSB" camp. And every other nation state's equivalent agency is on that list too.

But spy agencies aren't fucking magical. They can't violate information theory, physics, or causality.

They also aren't omniscient about mathematics, logic, or software vulnerabilities. If they were, they wouldn't have competition. And they can't wave a magic wand and get enthusiastic cooperation from international forums of cryptology experts. That's ridiculous.