This is quite the long con if you think he's been developing, advocating and promoting free (as in speech) software for years just in case this NSA thing got out of hand.
I agree we shouldn't let a single expert become a single point of failure in our understanding of security, but that's missing the point in this discussion. Based on Schneier's long history of work, including advocating open source solutions, he's earned my trust, but the great thing is that because he's such an advocate for open source, you can check the code. Likewise, if you're reading something he's written, you can check his sources. You don't have to trust him. You can do your own fact checking!
But now you're actually arguing why he _should_ be trusted, rather than just taking it as a matter of faith, which was the whole point of the exercise.
It is open source. You are free to inspect it and see if it has backdoors.
Likewise with Twofish: https://www.schneier.com/twofish.html
This is quite the long con if you think he's been developing, advocating and promoting free (as in speech) software for years just in case this NSA thing got out of hand.
I agree we shouldn't let a single expert become a single point of failure in our understanding of security, but that's missing the point in this discussion. Based on Schneier's long history of work, including advocating open source solutions, he's earned my trust, but the great thing is that because he's such an advocate for open source, you can check the code. Likewise, if you're reading something he's written, you can check his sources. You don't have to trust him. You can do your own fact checking!