"The more I have learned about the system, the worse it has gotten," Appelbaum said. "Even if they turn Haystack off, if people try to use it, it still presents a risk.... It would be possible for an adversary to specifically pinpoint individual users of Haystack."

I would like to stress that I am not resigning in shame over the much-maligned test program. It is as bad as Appelbaum makes it out to be. But I maintain that it was a diagnostic tool never intended for dissemination, never mind hype. I did have a solid, reasonable design, and described it in our brief overture of transparency. _That_ is what Haystack would have been. It would have worked!

What I am resigning over is the inability of my organization to operate effectively, maturely, and responsibly. We have been disgraced. I am resigning over dismissing pointed criticism as nonsense. I am resigning over hype trumping security. I am resigning over being misled, and over others being misled in my name.

Just to make it clear: Haystack is not at fault here; the State Department -- I am not so sure. Austin Heap can make whatever statements he likes; the government, however, is supposed to treat such statements with due skepticism and think through the political implications of their endorsement of any technologies. All this fast-tracking stuff would surely reflect bad on the State Department if after an independent security review it does turn out that Haystack has severe security flaws, which its testers -- or other Iranian uses -- may not have been aware of.

And why did Clinton choose to speak about Haystack and not say Tor or any other tool? Also, not very clear. Were the diplomats charmed by all the buzz around Haystack in the media? Possibly. That said, it would be very good to know whether the State Department did ANY analysis/testing of Haystack's claimed capabilities, thought through how well it could scale in Iran, and whether they may be hurting its users in Iran -- current and future ones -- by lining up behind them. Were these questions asked and answered?

I like Hollywood as much as the next guy -- and yet something just doesn't feel right about Haystack. What really bothers me is that one cannot download and examine their software; as far as the Internet is concerned, Haystack doesn't exist. In fact, Heap says that it is only distributed to trusted contacts inside Iran; putting it online would create a situation where the government could easily get hold of it as well and then reverse-engineer it or ban it or find a way to track its users.

So, in essence, the outside public - including Iranians -- are asked to believe that a) Haystack software exists b) Haystack software works c) Haystack software rocks d) the Iranian government doesn't yet have a copy of it, nor do they know that Haystack rocks & works. (And who could fault them for not reading Newsweek? I certainly can't). For someone with my Eastern European sensibilities, that's a lot of stuff to believe in. Even Santa -- we call him Ded Moroz -- appears more plausible in comparison.

To me, it seems like a no-brainer: if you want to distribute technology that may endanger lives, make sure that the technology is secure. The only good way that I know of to make sure that it's secure is to let outsiders test it.