NSA Award for Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper
"Yesterday I received the NSA award for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 for my IEEE Oakland paper The science of guessing. Im honored to have been recognised by the distinguished academic panel assembled by the NSA. Id like to again thank Henry Watts, Elizabeth Zwicky, and everybody else at Yahoo! who helped me with this research while I interned there, as well as Richard Clayton and Ross Anderson for their support and supervision throughout.
On a personal note, Id be remiss not to mention my conflicted feelings about winning the award given what we know about the NSAs widespread collection of private communications and what remains unknown about oversight over the agencys operations. Like many in the community of cryptographers and security engineers, Im sad that we havent better informed the public about the inherent dangers and questionable utility of mass surveillance. And like many American citizens Im ashamed weve let our politicians sneak the country down this path.
In accepting the award I dont condone the NSAs surveillance. Simply put, I dont think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form. "
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2013/07/19/nsa-award-for-best-scientific-cybersecurity-paper/