Chmelar invented the finger in 1971, as a 16 year old. His high school team made it to the Iowa state basketball championships, prompting Chmelar to find a new way to support the players. The rest is history: the idea expanded, Chmelar never patented it, and the finger became one of the sporting world’s most loved icons.

While the statement, essentially that the ends justify the means, makes sense, the public has failed to accept it. Why? Because the NSA has yet to provide any single actionable case when intelligence gathered from this or other programs has been the factor in interrupting, preventing, or otherwise solving crime. When both the methods and results are secret, it creates a vacuum of information that must be filled by revelation or suspicion.

Encryption was one of the chief ways in which Nazi Germany was able to succeed in its blitzkrieg war campaign. Until the breaking of its Enigma code, used to past encrypted, secret messages, the Allied powers were entirely in the dark about troop movements and strikes. Once the system was broken in part by Alan Turing, the British and United States forces were able to intercept and interpret secret transmissions.

Both the New York Times and the Guardian chose to publish documents outlining NSA encryption plans and industrial espionage, despite a plea from the NSA to avoid running the story. The two outlets, however, chose to gently redact the papers to remove non-vital, personal information. Regardless, the three pages shared displayed a vital portion of the NSA’s SIGINT program, designed to “influence” encryption standards to have flaws and to exploit said flaws in analyzing encrypted messages.

Canzani was killed instantly at 3am on Columbus, Ohio’s I-670, when Cordle, driving his truck in the wrong lane, slammed into the car. While Matthew was taken to the hospital, he was not publicly named or charged by September 3rd, 2013, as police chose to continue the investigation.

The key word is “trusted.” A “trusted” technology in computing indicates one that is deemed safe and reliable, with minimal security holes. Since the NSA has already influenced the purposeful, malicious creation of exploits, they then use these flaws to corrupt entire networks and systems.

The problem? Everyone else using these systems. The NSA is not the only dedicated cybersecurity team in the world – once an exploit is revealed, it will be shared and used. That corrupts the entire system for everyone.