The case supporting the NSA's PRISM decrypting

A consensus is gelling that the National Security Agency -- in using brute-force password hacking techniques, cracking into Virtual Private Networks and Secure Sockets Layer services, and taking steps to weaken certain inherently weak encryption protocols -- is simply doing what the NSA has always done, and was, in fact, created to do: keep the US competitive in the spy-vs-spy world. Dave Jevans, chief technology officer of mobile security firm Marble Security, says it's possible that with the NSA's multi-billion dollar budget and tens of thousands of employees, the agency may have discovered mathematical techniques to weaken certain cryptographic systems. "However, such fundamental mathematical research doesn't constitute back doors or other covert agendas," Jevans says. "Perhaps the NSA has discovered ways to crack these systems that have not been discovered by the smartest researchers in academia and industry. But there's no law against clever mathematicians creating new encryption schemes."