[matt_wulfeck]

I ask myself what I should be more upset about: that someone walked away with government hacking tools, or that our government knew about existing exploits in critical American company technologies and kept them a secret?

[redwards510]

Understandable complaints, but isn't the latter just standard procedure in modern cyberwarfare? I think I would be more upset if America didn't have any offensive zero-day weapons to strike with. If we only had capability against foreign companies software, everyone would just buy American and be immune.

[JumpCrisscross]

Would Americans be more or less secure in that world?

On account of (a) unjust governments being more likely to abuse power than just ones, (b) unjust governments are more dangerous than unjust actors and (c) the belief that just governments are plausible, I would say "more".

If you live under an unjust government, their curtailed power is a plus. If you live under a just government, your threat profile from unjust governments is decreased. The threat from unjust actors may increase, but that is a fair trade-off per (b).

[ChoHag]

This is what the USA has forgotten, and why they are such a disappointment to the rest of us. Unjust government can be as abusive as it likes. Just government gains its strength from justice alone and its acts of abuse are its first step towards its inevitable unjustice.

Additional: Abuse is seductive. Abuse from power is absolutely seductive.

[tobltobs]

This doesn't make any sense. You will have attack cyber weapons, but at the same time you risk that your enemies can use the same weapon against the infrastructure you are there to protect.

Collecting attack weapons, but letting your defense rot is a strategy which might work in computer games.

[ChoHag]

You seem to be implying they're doing something else?

[tobltobs]

Who do you mean with "they" and what is "something"?

[ChoHag]

I can't remember now. Spies and spying I think it was.

[ChoHag]

The NSA retaining zerodays and other exploits works if and only if they use their knowledge of the exploits to patch their own systems, which is unlikely enough, and that they share such patches with certain echelons of US corporate society.

Apparently they do it anyway.

[jwtadvice]

More than this. They work with and infiltrate companies in order to insert vulnerabilities and backdoors in otherwise correctly designed products so that they can be exported and exploited overseas.