Bonum Certa Men Certa

Why Free/Libre Software Should be Promoted Using Privacy Arguments, Too

Sign for privacy



Summary: An opportunity for Free software advocacy in an age of privacy concerns, policy incompatibility with warrantless surveillance, and increased Microsoft distrust due to collusion with the NSA

Ethical rather than purely practical reasons have been used to promote software freedom, referencing examples of malicious features like DRM and privacy violations, including back doors (which are not just privacy-infringing). As the Web grows and more data gets accumulated, it is increasingly being realised that privacy does matter to a lot of people. They start to demand that software and services no longer spy on them.



With the NSA leaks, we now have concrete proof of the lack of privacy everywhere. E-mails are now the digital equivalent of postcards, where the mailman can read everything and many other people in between can inspect the contents without leaving traces, even tampering with the content (as some people reported in the case of E-mail). Datacentres offer no real security from warrantless surveillance, either. To make matters worse, whatever Web browser and network setup we use, the ISP helps spy on us and the sites we visit spy on us too, then sell data about us. There was also spying on diplomats in G8 summits, showing that nobody is immune to it. Data, unless stored locally (and preferably encrypted), is hardly safe anymore, certainly not when it's stored remotely and passed over the wires (repositioning and shifting of the data between datacentres helps change the laws, too). With reliable and ubiquitous encryption this would mostly be a solved problem, but mathematicians at the NSA always try to stay a step ahead and break encryption, storing indefinitely encrypted traffic.

Microsoft is not just another company when it comes to surveillance. Based on recent leaks, we now have it confirmed that a lot of software including Microsoft Skype is simply spyware, as we shall document soon in our Microsoft and the NSA wiki page (overview of privacy issues). Bill Gates has been spying on children recently [1, 2] and also funded crowd control/police state for profit. Regarding the latest revelations about the NSA-Microsoft collusion we have this article which slams Microsoft's biggest investor and co-founder:

Establishment Hero Bill Gates Sold You Out to the NSA, But That's Not All...



Bill Gates gets heaped with praise from the establishment for his business prowess and his so-called philanthropy. In turn, society seems to elevate him to near godlike status for his generosity and "humanitarian work". He's been the poster child for the "see, not all big corporations are evil" argument. Well, not anymore.

Recent revelations that his company Microsoft has, for decades, built backdoors for government spying may put a few chinks in Gates' shining public armor.

And if one dares look any closer at Gates' other endeavors, they may discover that their intentions are not nearly as benevolent as general public perception leads us to believe.

First, let me try to outline just how completely Microsoft sold you out to spy agencies. After NSA whistleblower Snowden outed Microsoft as complicit in the PRISM information sharing program, it has come to light that NSA has a backdoor to Microsoft-owned Skype, Windows operating system updates contain bypasses for the NSA, the encryption for Outlook is unlocked for the NSA prior to launches, and Internet Explorer is likely the most compromised.

In short, this means the NSA has nearly full access to roughly 92% of the commercial computers in the world.

[...]

Bill Gates is an admitted advocate of population reduction. He's admitted that the goal of his immunization aid to third world countries is to reduce population. Don't believe me? See here, here, and here. Also, through his foundation he owns 500,000 shares of Monsanto's stock and he is a public salesman GMO crops around the world. And this is just the scratching the surface of who the real Bill Gates is.

Gates is a monopoly-man sell-out who now has nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to eradicating the plague he calls humanity from the earth.

Hopefully, this Microsoft spying story will cause more people to question Gates' true intentions and those of an establishment that would deceive us into thinking he's somehow a knight in shining armor. Nothing could be further from the truth.


The bottom line is, now more than before we can show people compelling reasons not to trust Microsoft and to use Free software wherever possible. Proprietary software serves plutocrats.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October