Why bitcoin isn't going to make it: The National Security Agency

[johnyj]

NSA agents are all here, they know how secure sha256 is and they are buying BTC like crazy, their salary have just been lowered by the government spending cuts and they need some extra income to make their ends meet

[tvbcof]

NSA agents are all here, they know how secure sha256 is and they are buying BTC like crazy, their salary have just been lowered by the government spending cuts and they need some extra income to make their ends meet

This assertion or some permutation of it would not surprise me in the least.  NSA agents are among the most likely people to know how sausage is made and I bet that more than a few of them are fairly disgusted by it.  Many of them are likely recognize the magnitude of the perils that our society and systems face and thus, of course, to recognize the potential of a solution such as Bitcoin.

I am quite surprised at the uniformly positive media attention that Bitcoin has received over the last year and a half to be honest.  One hypothesis is that it is at least of interest if not actively deployed by a range of individuals from a variety of different backgrounds.

[Sukrim]

This assertion or some permutation of it would not surprise me in the least.  NSA agents are among the most likely people to know how sausage is made and I bet that more than a few of them are fairly disgusted by it.

I rather guess they are just crypto nerds and as exited as a lot of other people that finally a currency based on cryptography has taken off and is "out in the wild".
Also a nice hello to the NSA person reading this and biting his/her knuckles for not being allowed to comment at all about his/her work and any of the assumptions in this thread.

[uuidman]

The truth is out there.
/Fox Mulder

No
The truth is out there in the blockchain.
 

[foggyb]

Thinking from other perspectives, it's almost certain that Chinese government will take over Avalon technology.  Bitcoin is too small now, but when it becomes big enough to matter, they will seize control of it and mass produce their own.  So, I hope BFL and other companies succeed so that the "power" doesn't belong to one country.

Why would the Chinese (or any government) want to seize control of bitcoin when decentralization is its greatest strength? It doesn't make any sense.

Bitcoin (algorithm, network, and currency) is far more valuable when it's open-source, ubiquitous, and decentralized.

[tvbcof]

This assertion or some permutation of it would not surprise me in the least.  NSA agents are among the most likely people to know how sausage is made and I bet that more than a few of them are fairly disgusted by it.

I rather guess they are just crypto nerds and as exited as a lot of other people that finally a currency based on cryptography has taken off and is "out in the wild".
Also a nice hello to the NSA person reading this and biting his/her knuckles for not being allowed to comment at all about his/her work and any of the assumptions in this thread.

I doubt that almost anyone who has their shit together at all has much interest in participating in this forum.

Additionally, those who have an professional exposure to the intelligence community are well trained to keep their mouths shut by default.  In my (thankfully) limited time in the DC area I noticed that the entire community almost all the way down to the 7-11 clerks adopted a polite but closed attitude.  It contrasted sharply with West Coasters who tend to happily blather on about anything.

[Jaagu]

@Fool [& @axus]
This is yet another FUD thread.

Agreed.

"I once told [to Eustace Mullins] how much respect I had for George Orwell's daring to write 1984 -- to which he sharply replied: "It's a great piece of pro-government propaganda -- they win in the end." Mr. Mullins is of course right: Orwell's Big Brother is always one step ahead, almost omniscient -- and therefore invincible."
- Beatrice Mott. This Difficult Individual Eustace Mullins — and the Remarkable Ezra Pound.
March 20, 2010
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Mott-Mullins.html#R

[Ente]

@Fool [& @axus]
This is yet another FUD thread.

Agreed.

"I once told [to Eustace Mullins] how much respect I had for George Orwell's daring to write 1984 -- to which he sharply replied: "It's a great piece of pro-government propaganda -- they win in the end." Mr. Mullins is of course right: Orwell's Big Brother is always one step ahead, almost omniscient -- and therefore invincible."
- Beatrice Mott. This Difficult Individual Eustace Mullins — and the Remarkable Ezra Pound.
March 20, 2010
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Mott-Mullins.html#R

Mind==blown.

Thank you.

Ente

[Timo Y]

Large organizations are terrible at keeping secrets. Even clever people make stupid mistakes from time to time. Even patriots defect from time to time.

Relying on secrecy in order to stay ahead in security is a bad strategy.  The more experts you recruit into your research team, the higher the risk of leaks.  All it takes is one rogue employee in 100. The fewer experts you recruit, the less competitive you become compared to the worldwide open research community in academia.  Either way you lose.

Also, how can the NSA be certain that the Russians or Chinese haven't independently discovered the same "secrets"?

It makes much more sense for the NSA to base security on openness rather than secrecy, because openness creates predictable security.

[tvbcof]

Large organizations are terrible at keeping secrets. Even clever people make stupid mistakes from time to time. Even patriots defect from time to time.

I would say that defection at this point is basically part and parcel to being defined as a 'patriot'.  That's a personal view of course, and based on my understanding of the nature of our country (the US.)

Relying on secrecy in order to stay ahead in security is a bad strategy.  The more experts you recruit into your research team, the higher the risk of leaks.  All it takes is one rogue employee in 100. The fewer experts you recruit, the less competitive you become compared to the worldwide open research community in academia.  Either way you lose.

Yes.  The only silver lining to the massive dragnet and billion dollar datacenters is that casting a wide net yields lot so fish.  If anyone is eventually called to account for their past malfeasance it will likely be due to the existence of this resource.  But it is far from a certainty that this happy outcome will ever be realized.

I looked around once a few years ago to see if there was some sort of open-source intelligence platform.  Something like just interested participants inputting data about observations, and other participants writing code to analyze the data.  Something distantly related to Wikileaks in some ways.  Didn't find anything, and I 'm not sure it is terribly viable since the cost of attacking it (with bogus or crafted input) is probably orders of magnitude less than that of defending.  Asymmetric warfare going the wrong way (by my point of view.)