The continuing trickle of Snowden revelations needs to be considered in all of these discussions.
It is not clear---It is not indeed very likely---that the NSA knows just what documents Snowden obtained copies of. The only documents that he can be known certainly to have copied are those that he or someone acting for him has already made public. In these circumstances, the NSA, which already has egg on its face, is very unlikely to deny knowledge of a vulnerability like Heartbleed if classified documents establishing that it did indeed know of it were to be found in its files at the time of Snowden's announcement. As I have already said here, caricatures of the NSA as an omniscient villain in unhelpful, in considerable measure because they are easy to dismiss/refute, so easy to refute that the NSA may well welcome them, at least in a Pickwickian sense of the word 'welcome', at this juncture. (Recall Colonel Blimp's characterizations of Picasso's drawing as inferior in quality to those of his, Blimp's, grand daughter.) John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
