01.14.22
Gemini version available ♊︎White House Asking Proprietary Software Companies That Add NSA Back Doors About Their Views on ‘Open Source’ Security
Video download link | md5sum 660351fe04a47c33611de299d17501b4
GAFAM Finger-pointing for White House
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: The US government wants us to think that in order to tackle security issues we need to reach out to the collective ‘wisdom’ of the very culprits who created the security mess in the first place (even by intention, for imperialistic objectives)
THE very same companies that back-door their own software (i.e. deliberately make their products not secure) have been asked by the American administration for their views on the security of Free software and security of such software, which isn’t defective by design, maybe just by accident, occasionally.
We’ve already commented on this ludicrous situation in passing (in our Daily Links). The biggest National Security threat (Microsoft) is infiltrating panels on security, diverting attention away from the biggest threats to lesser threats, which are usually the solution, too. Lobbying? Outright political corruption? Both?
Either way, the above video concerns this new article, which is only one of many. We already listed about half a dozen earlier today. The author is so clueless that he calls the Linux Foundation the “Linux Open Source Foundation” and names IBM/Red Hat as if they’re separate entities. The same for GitHub and Microsoft. To quote: “The full tech participant list includes Akamai, Amazon, Apache Software Foundation, Apple, Cloudflare, Facebook/Meta, GitHub, Google, IBM, Linux Open Source Foundation, Microsoft, Oracle, RedHat and VMware.”
Of the above, only the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) actually speaks for Free/Open Source software. Yes, Zemlin’s PAC is little but a front group for some of those other companies.
Why are all the companies invited (assuming Red Hat is just IBM) to discuss this matter dripping “conflict of interest” and how can this establish trust? Why don’t they also discuss the threat posed by proprietary software? Some of the headlines that emerged afterwards want us to think that “Open Source” — not Microsoft et al — is the real “national security” threat. We’ll omit links to those “reports”… (FUD)
“…any real plan has to eliminate Microsoft from both the desktop and the supporting infrastructure. That is a staffing problem, not a technical one.”
–Techrights associate“Speaking of politics,” an associate noted today, “notice that the US’ concern about critical infrastructure is shifting all of the blame and attention on to FOSS. At the same time only the big, proprietary vendors are invited to the planning sessions with the government. They bring in clowns instead of the big names. They should at least be consulting with Bruce Perens, Bruce Schneier, Dan Geer, Moxie Marlinspike, Eugene Spafford, Daniel Bernstein, Paul Vixie etc. (notice that Spaf’s quote about Windows is now missing from pretty much every page that includes his old quotes…)”
And “even RMS and Linus Torvalds could add benefit if they had not been reframed as controversial by the attackers now moving in and out of DC. Wietse Venema is in the US too… Phil Zimmermann is still around too. Many of those involved in LibreSSL and OpenSSL are in the US as well… the list of knowledgeable, skilled, experienced people is long. No need for them to include any frauds, charlatans, or poseurs. But that’s what we get when Microsoft reps got in on the campaign team. Microsoft created the problems, and therefore is unable to solve them and it would be inappropriate to even have them involved. There’s a famous quote which goes approximately like this, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.” As such Microsoft representatives have to be cleared from the room long, long before discussion can start. Ransomware is just one symptom of microsoftianism. Even if Windows is retained for a shorter period on the desktop, servers could run FreeBSD with OpenZFS.The snapshotting feature would make data restoration much less inconvenient. However, any real plan has to eliminate Microsoft from both the desktop and the supporting infrastructure. That is a staffing problem, not a technical one. Even Microsofters, such as Mitchel Lewis, observe that, but most don’t dare speak up. I presume fear of NDAs and non-disparagement clauses in various contracts, especially terminations.”
“Microsoft created the problems, and therefore is unable to solve them and it would be inappropriate to even have them involved.”
–Techrights associateThe number of articles we saw about Log4j that cited Microsoft as if it was a security expert was truly worrying. Since when does Microsoft get to play “concern troll” about “Open Source”?
“About the disappearance of the Spafford quote,” our associate noted: “It used to be cited everywhere but most of those sites are gone and the rest seem to have redacted just that one quote.” █
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