&gt; Yeah, he&#x27;s full of it. We in high-assurance community and even the cypherpunks have been telling people forever it was being abused. Because people were abusing it and its design practically asked for it. These were ignored as externalities by people motivated by convenience, feature bloat, price, and&#x2F;or profit. Even getting it down to almost identical cost&#x2F;speed didn&#x27;t help if it lacked unnecessary feature X.<p>So, you&#x27;re saying that Snowden is <i>right</i>, that computer people as a whole were not aware of it. There is a huge difference between a theoretical risk and someone coming forward with a huge amount of proof that it is, in fact, happening right now.