[ihsw]

The US Government and the NSA have made it painfully clear that there are two options for the US to participate in the global internet: capability to decrypt everything or an American version of China's Great Firewall.

The capability to decrypt everything is largely outside of their control, however they can exert pressure of ISPs, SSL certificate authorities, commercial software vendors, social networking services, and a variety of other organizations.

The rationale being that the US Government pressures those organizations to intentionally implement weaker security measures to facilitate the ongoing capabilities of the government's suspicionless surveillance systems.

Since this system of clandestine supportive relationships is potentially unreliable (since it is directly outside of their control and it relies on reciprocal partnerships) then it stands to reason that the simply revelation of these relationships could jeopardize the US Government's surveillance capabilities.