The Snowden Psyop Continues: Now Comes The Fallout

You ATS?, this site runs off Apache so I'd take a guess that its Linux as well.

Well does it? Heff?

reply to post by Hefficide


Sorry for misunderstanding.

With that clarification, I feel that what you fear is already in place.

Ever wonder what that xerox folder is on an XP system drive?

Red-Hat; you know which government builds that right?

OpenSuse has been commercialised by Novell for over 10 years...

Mandrivia is the French government I believe?

Originally posted by Hefficide


Theoretically hacks to such BIOS based preventatives would come along... but then we enter the realm where law could easily make rooting a computer a crime.

I do think they are trying (Apple?) but I really feel we will eventually win this war. Im a bit all over the place at the moment but Im sure Apple has lost a few cases where they have tried to prosecute for jailbreaking an iPhone. Really a phone is just another computer these days.

From my perspective, the lack of knowledge about technology by lawmakers is the biggest barrier to winning this war. A generational change of the guard will hopefully reconcile this. IE: it will take time.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by TucoTheRat

 

With Win 8 and the issues of UEFI the ability to render FOSS totally impotent is only one deal with the makers of the hardware away.

Theoretically hacks to such BIOS based preventatives would come along... but then we enter the realm where law could easily make rooting a computer a crime.

Getting rid of open source software is possible and I suspect that Uncle Sam may be eyeballing that prize currently.

Well the reason people have octo cores to play video games, is not to play video games lol.

But really I don't foresee government intervention here, as in laws and such. The corporate way of doing things is enough to keep FOSS in check in the public realm.

The only reason I entertain your theory is because of this whole spy scandal being in the news. It has forces every government in the world to cut ties with corporate and scramble to write their own software using FOSS. Foss has always been the backbone of software tech but now FOSS has become the only line of defense to data mining. You have the Kremlin switching from computer to typewriters while they work out their own code and every country is doing the same. Even the UN is super pissed with the US.

This might force the hand of the US toward your theory, but still, in denial lol. I think a huge cloud push in on the way, to the point where a hard drive is a thing of the pass, if that happens FOSS will be left alone IMO.

The Rat.

Originally posted by NeoParadigm
reply to post by cartenz

 

I'd take a guess that its Linux as well.

Why don't you make a comment when you are sure about it?

edit on 28-8-2013 by NeoParadigm because: (no reason given)

Its called an educated guess from my many years building web infrastructure. I can do a crawl of the site and find out for sure but I dont really want to get a potential banhammer from throwing scripts at the ATS server.

reply to post by TucoTheRat


Glad you bought up the cloud. It will make OS's as we know them obsolete, just look at widows 8 and how it has diverged from the traditional Microsoft paradigm.

But with the cloud, the back doors dont have to be put in place at a local/machine level, they just need to be at a server/application level. Meaning instead of having millions of doors to each users machine, you have a les amount of doors to their cloud services.

Say they put in place a mechanism in GitHub or some other software repository--they could potentially hack EVERY piece of software that repository hosts without having to go thru project by project...

hmmm.

reply to post by cartenz


Do you feel that the article that the OP qoutes has any rethoric that implies more government focus against FOSS?

Originally posted by cartenz
reply to post by TucoTheRat

 

Glad you bought up the cloud. It will make OS's as we know them obsolete, just look at widows 8 and how it has diverged from the traditional Microsoft paradigm.

But with the cloud, the back doors dont have to be put in place at a local/machine level, they just need to be at a server/application level. Meaning instead of having millions of doors to each users machine, you have a les amount of doors to their cloud services.

Say they put in place a mechanism in GitHub or some other software repository--they could potentially hack EVERY piece of software that repository hosts without having to go thru project by project...

hmmm.

Well, I'm not to sure if a cloud would make OS's obsolete, we will still need computing power BIOS and maybe a stripped down OS, UEFI that Heff mentioned and firmware. Windows 8, or as I like to call it "windows phone", is a perfect predecessor to what it coming. But we will still have excessive computing power in the home, just that all data will be in corporate hands. Another reason why I think a FOSS corporate or government administered license will be a requirement, if we are thinking along the lines of the OP's theory. It would be the only way from stoping anyone from opening up their own cloud.

Hey so I just had a thought.....If Heff's fears are correct the government might outlaw none-corporate cloud repositories with out a strict and backdoor full license.

What do you guys think about that?

The Rat.

reply to post by NeoParadigm


I dont feel that it is implied by the article, no.

Do I share Heff's concerns?--partially. But Im confident us developers will win this war and in 50 years there will only be openSource software and free beer and all websites will be written in regular expressions...

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reply to post by Hefficide


I guess the NSA doesnt really know # about computers..... gives me confidence in anon i guess. Is that a good or a bad thing?

The NSA doesnt know how to monitor its own privacy yet they are monitoring all of us...

Hi folks,

As much as I would like to believe that Snowden would have had to have used some very baroque assemblage of FOOS running from his USB drives, I can't find a single person that I know in the field that will agree with me; including my network security professor.

The general consensus is that he did, indeed, waltz right up to the unsecured USB ports, insert his thumb drive and start dragging and dropping files.

Yep, that's the story. Seems my imagination has run off without me.