> if you did not write (or at least read) the code that you’re using to do all of the above, then you’re at the mercy of whoever wrote it.
It's worse than that. Even if you read the code, you have to trust that the code you read is the code a service is actually using. Even if you deploy the code yourself, you have to trust that the infrastructure you're running on does not have some type of backdoor. Even if you run your own infrastructure, hardware can still have backdoors. Of course, the likelihood of any of these things actually becoming a problem decreases significantly as you read through the paragraph.
It's worse than that. Even if you read the code, you have to trust that the code you read is the code a service is actually using. Even if you deploy the code yourself, you have to trust that the infrastructure you're running on does not have some type of backdoor. Even if you run your own infrastructure, hardware can still have backdoors. Of course, the likelihood of any of these things actually becoming a problem decreases significantly as you read through the paragraph.