They work sometimes, sometimes people do rob you. That's still a thing that happens. So I lock my door to deter thieves, and buy insurance so that if I do get robbed I'm not doomed.
The NSA's statements aren't "we've lowered risk to an acceptable level, and put in safeguards for when leaks inevitable occur". They're "we're the only ones using this data, so there's no problem". That's provably false several times over.
To continue the metaphor, they didn't buy insurance because they trusted their home security so highly, and lately it's starting to look like they also forgot to lock the door.
Physical security metaphors are irrelevant to the Internet because there is no physical equivalent to issuing one command that will simultaneously try to break into every door in the United States and report back to you the ones its succeeds with. That is just one example of a relevant difference that prevents physical metaphors from working. I could come up with half-a-dozen more without hardly trying, but one is adequate.
I once went around and taped a note to about 50 doors in my neighborhood. As I recall, two of them opened at my touch - they weren't securely latched. At that point, it didn't matter if they were locked.
They work sometimes, sometimes people do rob you. That's still a thing that happens. So I lock my door to deter thieves, and buy insurance so that if I do get robbed I'm not doomed.
The NSA's statements aren't "we've lowered risk to an acceptable level, and put in safeguards for when leaks inevitable occur". They're "we're the only ones using this data, so there's no problem". That's provably false several times over.
To continue the metaphor, they didn't buy insurance because they trusted their home security so highly, and lately it's starting to look like they also forgot to lock the door.
Physical security metaphors are irrelevant to the Internet because there is no physical equivalent to issuing one command that will simultaneously try to break into every door in the United States and report back to you the ones its succeeds with. That is just one example of a relevant difference that prevents physical metaphors from working. I could come up with half-a-dozen more without hardly trying, but one is adequate.
Well, you did start with the assumption the door would be locked. If you left it open that would be the rough equivalent of what happened here.
I once went around and taped a note to about 50 doors in my neighborhood. As I recall, two of them opened at my touch - they weren't securely latched. At that point, it didn't matter if they were locked.