Comment by fossuser
3 years ago
I think it's just both. It's a giant organization of people arguing in favor of different things at different times over its history, I'd guess there's disagreement internally. Some arguing it's critical to secure encryption (I agree with this camp), others wanting to be able to break it for offense reasons despite the problems that causes.
Since we only see the occasional stuff that's unclassified we don't really know the details and those who do can't share them.
There are plenty of leaked classified documents from NSA (and others) that have been verified as legitimate. Many people working in public know stuff that hasn’t been published in full.
Here is one example with documents: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powe...
Here is another: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-...
Please read each and every classified document published alongside those two stories. I think you may revise your comments afterwards.