# They May Have More CPU Speed, But They're Not Giants (Govt & Privacy)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-may-have-more-cpu-speed-but-theyre-not-giants-govt-privacy/708822
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 3, 2015, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-may-have-more-cpu-speed-but-theyre-not-giants-govt-privacy/708822 "2015-01-03T01:49:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2015, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-may-have-more-cpu-speed-but-theyre-not-giants-govt-privacy/708822/1 "2015-01-03T01:49:13Z")
One bit of optimistic news that rebuts the fatalist-apathy school of thought on the privacy issue:
> [@](#):
>
> [Open Source Privacy Tools NSA Can’t Crack: OTR, PGP, RedPhone, Tor And Tails](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nsa-resistant-open-source-tools,28273.html)
>
> In a recent talk at the Chaos Communication Congress, Jacob Appelbaum, who is a core member of the Tor Project and is now working with Der Spiegel and Laura Poitras to analyze the Snowden documents, unveiled some documents showing which tools NSA couldn’t crack…
Ever since the story started, I thought that its main significance would be to get a critical mass of users and providers to take security seriously, which would be beneficial against private-sector crooks even if the public-sector ones straighten up and start flying right. While the message clearly hasn’t been received everywhere (coffSonycoff), the trend does seem to be headed in that direction, and a reaffirmation that it isn’t a vain errand is bound to help in that regard.
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### Author:  [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-may-have-more-cpu-speed-but-theyre-not-giants-govt-privacy/708822/2 "2015-01-04T19:54:55Z")
Personally I would say that those tools can’t be cracked “for now”.