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Prove that no teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars.



My argument is entirely facetious, of course.

But you have no reason to believe a teapot orbits the sun somewhere. There is no reasonable way to believe that a teapot could have "gotten there". No space programs launching teapots just for laughs. Space programs in general being far too expensive for someone to launch something without government oversight.

Etc, etc...

My point is that the NSA does exist. They do degrade cryptographic algorithms, either through national security letters or simply bribery. The Dual_EC_DRBG fiasco happened. It really happened. Private United States based organisations do cooperate with these programs, either willingly or because they are forced to.

Now, ask yourself: What would it look like if Microsoft was -- hypothetically -- cooperating with the NSA?

Since Windows is so widely used, any weakness in its crypto would be a problem for the US itself! There's no separate "export version" any more.

(Which reminds me: "Export-grade crypto". Remember that? That happened too. That was not a "conspiracy"! That was law! Recently.)

Back to my point: how would you degrade the crypto but protect US interests?

Well, one method would be to have strong crypto in the software, disable it by default, and mandate that all US government organisations turn the strong crypto on. Simply rely on IT administrator lazyness and tight budgets of most organisations to ensure that 99% of the world outside of US Government remains on the weak sauce.

Exhibit A: FIPS mode.

Exhibit B: TLS 1.1 and 1.2 available but off by default.

Exhibit C: AES for Active Directory available but off by default.

Now do you get it? It looks suspicious.

It's one thing to accuse a neighbour randomly of murder. It's entirely another thing if you see them putting a shockingly large and heavy rolled up carpet in the boot of their car at three o'clock in the morning.




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