NSA subversion of internet security: bad for the US, good for criminals | The Economist | Comment is free | theguardian.com

NSA subversion of internet security: bad for the US, good for criminals | The Economist | Comment is free | theguardian.com:

 The NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. 'Having once spied on a small number of specific targets, it now conducts online surveillance on a vast scale. It has spied on drug dealers, tax evaders and foreign firms, none of which pose a threat to national security.' Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

"Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on," declared Edward Snowden, the former computer technician at America's National Security Agency (NSA) responsible for leaking a trove of documents about his erstwhile employer's activities, in an online question-and-answer session in June.

The revelations published on 5 September by the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica, explain his careful choice of words. Many cryptographic systems in use on the internet, it seems, are not "properly implemented", but have been weakened by flaws deliberately introduced by the NSA as part of a decade-long programme to ensure it can read encrypted traffic.