"It is impossible, really, to oversee the border, unless they put the entire United States Army there," said Rafael Fernández de Castro, a foreign policy analyst in Mexico City.
That's a technical argument, and it's a good one, but you don't have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.
"I'd hate to have to administer something of that dimension," Mr. Greenspan said, citing concerns about an overload of paperwork at the S.E.C. "I am fearful of the resources that inevitably would go in that direction would impede the much smaller group which you really need to oversee in that respect".
If the directors really were thoughtfully overseeing management, things never would have gotten to the point where their only option was to fire their founder, out of the blue.
"I'm not really sold on it yet," said Raz Schionning, who oversaw American Apparel's entry into Second Life last year.
"This is easily absorbable, and it's not really a cut," said Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who oversaw military budgets in the Clinton White House.
It is as if he really were an ambassador, overseeing a country of unrest.
As chancellor, he introduced a badly designed regulation system, with the result that nobody was really in charge of overseeing the banks when the credit crunch hit.
Let's try and get some cohesiveness going.' So they brought me in to oversee that really.
Carmen Valenti, a HUD official who oversaw Mr. Hollis's work, called him "dedicated, very conscientious and really hard-working".
