Credit to Jessica Lyons at The Register for Covering the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), Proving That Authorities Do Not Want and Probably Never Wanted Computer Security (Except for Themselves)
A "backdoor mandate", indeed...
AN associate has words of encouragement. "Kudos to Jessica for mentioning CALEA," he has said, "theReg is about the only one any more..."
This nicely relates to articles we published on the same day [1, 2], naming CALEA and other signs that security isn't even the goal of authorities which bemoan a lack of security. If someone implements something truly and genuinely secure, they panic and start demanding back doors (usually because of something about "terrorism" and "the children").
We have a lot more to say about truly secure programs, but we also have some topics for later (that are more urgent). We'll come back to this some other day. Nevertheless, the associate asserts that "the "memory safe" hype appears about politics, the idea seems to promote languages other than what Linux and other FOSS kernels are written in so as to prevent further growth and to grab more control..."
Look what happened to the Linux Foundation, which promotes kernels that compete against Linux (that it is 'merely' named after!). The Linux Foundation staffer who had come from Microsoft and wrote a lengthy blog post to justify this absurdity is no longer there. However, the absurd policy lives on. We're meant to follow the foundation called "Linux" (won't even enforce the trademark against repeat infringes like this one example from 3 days ago; this has gone on for years already**) that actively attacks the licence of Linux (GPL), the tools that make Linux (Git; the Linux Foundation promotes the attack on it, Microsoft GitHub), and the programming language it's coded in. Follow the money, follow the strings. █
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* Some relevant article text:
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Encryption backdoor debate 'done and dusted'
"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys," Virtru CEO and co-founder John Ackerly told The Register. "It's one thing to tap hardline wires or voice communication. It's yet another to open up the spigot to all digital communication."
This, of course, is exactly what the the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act — better known as CALEA — did 30 years ago. The 1994 law required telecom providers to design their systems to comply with wiretapping requests from law enforcement. In 2006, the FCC expanded this backdoor mandate to cover broadband internet companies.
CALEA also required telcos to lock down their own networks to prevent foreign spies from intercepting Americans' communications. But the FCC never really enforced this piece of the legislation.
** This has nothing to do with Linux. They ride the brand and destroy it.
