A bit crude, maybe a bit hurt and angry, but has some truth in it.

A few things help a lot (for BOTH sides - which is weird to say as the two sides should be US vs Threat Actors, but anyway):

1. Detach your identity from your ideas or work. You're not your work. An idea is just a passerby thought that you grabbed out of thin air, you can let it go the same way you grabbed it.

2. Always look for opportunities to create a dialogue. Learn from anyone and anything. Elevate everyone around you.

3. Instead of constantly looking for reasons why you're right, go with "why am I wrong?", It breaks tunnel vision faster than anything else.

Asking questions isn't an attack. Criticizing a design or implementation isn't criticizing you.

Thank you,

One of the "security people".

I find it interesting that you latched on their jailor metaphor, but had nothing to say about their core goal: protecting my privacy.

I'm okay with the people in charge of building on top of my private information being jailed by very strict, mean sounding, actually-higher-than-you people whose only goal is protecting my information.

Quite frankly, if you changed any word of that, they'd probably be impotent and my data would be toast.