[Zigurd]

> Alright, but now you trust that person.

In a word: no. With open source code, you could use software authored by the NSA, like SELinux, or you could even hire a manifestly untrustworthy party like Hacking Team to author some code and still be able to trust the code.

In Apple's case, there is a fairly good reason to trust Apple because it would be a hell of a kabuki theatre production to have the FBI and Apple battle in a Supreme Court case while colluding in secret. But would you trust a defense contractor? A telco? Limit or ideally eliminate the need for trust. Fortunately it is possible to reduce the need for trust below having to trust groups or individuals.

[alextgordon]

Isn't that discredited by Apple's "goto fail" bug? A critical function was mistakenly circumvented in an extremely transparent way, and yet the source code sat on their website for a long time without anybody noticing. Nobody even ran coverity on it.

[fleshweasel]

goto fail was in OpenSSL which many organizations use, but your point still stands.

[stouset]

No, this was a bug in SecureTransport, Apple's custom TLS implementation.

[fleshweasel]

Oops. You're right. Sorry.