The Big Leagues

Posted Oct 17, 2014 5:08 UTC (Fri) by Garak (guest, #99377)
In reply to: The Big Leagues by Garak
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

not that I expect anyone to have read it or misunderstood it, but obviously s/succeeded/don't succeed/. And in furtherance of my thesis, just today there is is one article I think in the washington post about the FBI/Comey asking for all crypto tech to have *cough* 'front' doors for the FBI built in, and another article on wired about Poitras and her explicit mention of the idea that non-'front'doored crypto is a fundamental equalizer (in some regard) of power between the individual and authoritarians. I.e. the head of "justice" in the U.S. has stated that they don't believe it should be allowed for people like Torvalds and Poettering to do such a good job of good, secure software development for the masses, that the FBI can't decrypt anything anytime it wants to be able to. And that is I suspect one of the lesser angles of persuasion that over years might cause people like Torvalds and Poettering (and a few of their more psychotic critics) to have less than 24/7/365 ideally polite and well considered attitudes in every discussion they are in.

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The Big Leagues

Posted Oct 17, 2014 6:00 UTC (Fri) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

And furthering both my thesis, and my prior decision to cut myself off from commenting on lwn, I feel the need to throw in another bottom line-

Kids (and adults, but this is mostly a message to the young)- if you want to have a future with a statistically low number of death threats against you personally, *do not under any circumstances* try to be an FOSS developer developing software with the kinds of security requirements that Torvalds and Poettering are. Really. Stay the hell away from places like the tor/tails development communities, and to a lesser, but not much extent, mainstream initsystem and kernel development. If you get good at it, and refuse to bend to pressure from special interest groups, you will be targeted. And if you aren't what the FBI considers a "team player", I wouldn't count on them to defend you from harm. Ditto for the NSA, CIA, Google, Facebook, and Blackwater.

The Big Leagues

Posted Oct 17, 2014 12:04 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

FWIW, that Washington Post article is written by a former FBI agent, so impartiality is not something I would ascribe to it.