The description is not exclusive, I'm not arguing that. Your last point makes a lot of sense; most people/groups who do nasty things do it using off-the-shelf components.
My issue is with the description painting TAILs in broad strokes as comsec for extremists. Yes, they've got National Security in the name, so they're looking at the software from a national security perspective. There is a wide gap, however, between describing software and its dangerous potential and describing software only in context of its dangerous potential.
If an analyst who hasn't heard of TAILs reads that description, it would sound to them like the program is something that's passed around extremist forums in much the same way malware toolkits are disseminated in warez forums, rather than what it is, which is a Debian fork that routes things through Tor. I say this because that was my first impression, which seemed off, leading me to google, then to wikipedia, and then back here in a huff.
Now, some examples (in order of ascending silliness) of why describing something in the context of one use case is harmful when many use cases exist:
* A lot of people use nmap to explore their home networks or as part of their jobs, potentially in the computer security industry. A lot of crackers also use nmap to case out potential targets. Calling nmap a "network scanning utility advocated by computer hackers" makes illegalizing nmap sound a lot more attractive than it actually would be, even if the statement is true.
* In the real world, certain products are systematically abused for less-than-kosher purposes. Still, we never refer to canned air as a household inhalant without mentioning its dusting use-case first. Potassium nitrate is fertilizer first, rocket fuel second, and only tangentially mentioned as an oxidizer for explosives. Other oxidizers, even the ones that are illegal for consumer sale, are written about the same way.
* Reductio ad absurdum: There's a lot of general purpose software everyone uses. I wouldn't be wrong if I said "Microsoft Word is a text management tool used by terrorist groups to hatch evil plots" or "SMS is a communications technology used by insurgents to detonate bombs" or, extending the idiom, "The Quran is a book used by militant Islamist groups to justify killing and brutalizing civilians." These descriptions are all, however, deeply misleading.
I say this because that was my first impression, which seemed off, leading me to google, then to wikipedia, and then back here in a huff.
I'm not sure I understand why you think an NSA analyst (who, inexplicably, is editing an XKEYSCORE rule file regarding Tor and Tails while being completely ignorant about Tor and Tails) is incapable of doing this same kind of information-gathering.
I'm not going to act like I think the NSA only hires the best and the brightest, but your example presumes the existence of an analyst that's all of: grossly undereducated for his duties, too mentally incompetent to be aware of it, and so far on the literal-minded end of the autism spectrum that they could be replaced by a shell script.
I believe any such analyst, if they existed, would have been promoted to management before they could cause any serious harm.
If an analyst who hasn't heard of TAILs reads that description, it would sound to them like the program is something that's passed around extremist forums in much the same way malware toolkits are disseminated in warez forums, rather than what it is, which is a Debian fork that routes things through Tor. I say this because that was my first impression, which seemed off, leading me to google, then to wikipedia, and then back here in a huff.
Now, some examples (in order of ascending silliness) of why describing something in the context of one use case is harmful when many use cases exist:
* A lot of people use nmap to explore their home networks or as part of their jobs, potentially in the computer security industry. A lot of crackers also use nmap to case out potential targets. Calling nmap a "network scanning utility advocated by computer hackers" makes illegalizing nmap sound a lot more attractive than it actually would be, even if the statement is true.
* In the real world, certain products are systematically abused for less-than-kosher purposes. Still, we never refer to canned air as a household inhalant without mentioning its dusting use-case first. Potassium nitrate is fertilizer first, rocket fuel second, and only tangentially mentioned as an oxidizer for explosives. Other oxidizers, even the ones that are illegal for consumer sale, are written about the same way.
* Reductio ad absurdum: There's a lot of general purpose software everyone uses. I wouldn't be wrong if I said "Microsoft Word is a text management tool used by terrorist groups to hatch evil plots" or "SMS is a communications technology used by insurgents to detonate bombs" or, extending the idiom, "The Quran is a book used by militant Islamist groups to justify killing and brutalizing civilians." These descriptions are all, however, deeply misleading.