Comment by waterTanuki

I'm not here to defend the NSA as it's treaded on liberties and rights countless times so far.

But understand this:

YES they have a vested interest in harvesting all of your private data for surveillance.

That doesn't mean they DON'T have a vested interest in safeguarding their own data and that of other gov't agencies.

They need the co-operation of the academic community and top cryptography experts to accomplish this. They cannot safeguard their own data or other agencies' data without publishing reports on what works and what doesn't.

So either they risk leaking the encryption algorithms that work for them by hiding them and only sharing the backdoored ones with the public, which is a violation of the [Kerchoff Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle) and a massive risk.

Or they simply cooperate with experts and publish algorithms that work for both them and everyone else.

Which sounds simpler?