The notion that because an individual is a member of a group which has been or is being disadvantaged compared to other groups, that individual deserves to be favoured above members of other groups, is ridiculous. It's dangerous, unfair and unjust nonsense. It's discrimination, pure and simple. There's no such thing as "positive discrimination".

Every individual deserves to have the same chance as everybody else, and should be judged on their merits alone.

An excellent illustration of the downfalls of security through obscurity. The NSA could have known that would happen and that their secrecy might decrease the average security situation due to people not using the actually more secure crypto. They should have been transparent about why they tweaked the S-box values. People shouldn't have to assume anything, best or worst.

And now of course the NSA have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted at all and nobody should ever accept magic numbers from them ever again...

Yes, it actually says "a view days" instead of "a few days". A typo is one thing, but that is spectacular... Did they dictate it to their computer or something?

I don't understand why, in cases like this, so much attention is given to the question whether it's lawful or not.

Who cares?! Of course it's lawful, the governments of the world have made sure to have enough overly broad "war on terror", "won't somebody think of the children", "national security" laws on the books to make it possible to find a legal loophole justifying anything. Fuck the law.

Surely the question should be whether it's moral or not?

It's been explained to me that this is standard MO for the USPTO. They never check patents before a cursory glance, and only when it is challenged do they actually look into the merits of it. Apparently this is because they just don't have (anywhere near) the amount of manpower they would need to keep up with the vast number of incoming patent applications.

Anyone know how true this is?

Well there's your problem...