Open Source Enables Terrorist States

chill writes "Where to begin? OpenBSD Journal has a couple of update articles on the business of DARPA cancelling POSSE and OpenBSD's grant. And here is a message from Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD big cheese, with a quote from a military spokesman. How does '...due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...' grab you? Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?"

Empowerment for All

The beauty of real, open source, free software is that it empowers EVERYONE. Be they good, bad, or ugly, everyone is given access to the same kind of benefits. On the one hand, of course this empowers terrorists. But then again so does encryption research. Should we ban encryption? I'm sure the MPAA would have things to say about that.
Open Source gives everyone an equal stake. Just because the enemy gets the same benefits doesn't mean we should stop. We're already "more powerful" than them - how will this uneven the playing field any more than it already is?

Re:Besides, it's BSD, not GPL, right?

Well - just a couple of non-serious points:

a) GPL lets you hide altered source if you don't give the program to anyone else.
b) I don't think the evil terrorists would care if they weren't allowed

Re:Empowerment for All

Stomping on scientific research, technical innovation and in this case open source, all in the name of fighting terrorism is deeply unhealthy. Well duh, you might say, but my point is it's unhealthy not only for people being stomped on, but those doing the stomping, simply because the competition, whether military, political or economic, will be happily beavering away doing said research, innovating, using said open source, and so on. Why don't those in charge understand that it isn't in _their_ long term interests? I can hazard a guess, but I'd divert the thread. To prevent a couple of spurious objections, I'm not in favour of declassifying the usual military secrets, but I think things are being taken too far at the moment.

Re:Empowerment for All

Result the decisions that are made are loosely related to the original information.

There is the old game of "gossip" telephone game

Probably everyone reading this has played the telephone game at one time or another.

Loved by nursery school teachers everywhere, it usually goes like this: participants stand in a circle. The teacher whispers a sentence, word, or phrase into the ear of the first person in the circle. The first person whispers what they hear to the second person, the second person whispers what they hear to the third person and so on until everyone has had a turn and the last person announces what they heard. The phrase which started out "The mashed potatoes are dry" has morphed into "Last Thanksgiving, my grandmother put ex-lax in the sweet potato pie."

That is WITHOUT hidden agenda and biases.

In this case, I suspect something similar happened. Theo's quote refers to a "DARPA review"; as I understand DARPA's rules, their grant money must be spent within the US. UPenn were accepting that money within the US, then transferring it to Theo's team in Canada - which looks to me as if it violates DARPA's rules. I suspect someone in DARPA took a look at how their grant money was being spent, and told UPenn "you can't use the money that way, stop it!". The various stages of communication (this quote came via a reporter FFS!) then mangled this into some sort of terrorist theory...

Whatever the reasoning, the US government really isn't supposed to "export" work this way. We've seen enough outcry on Slashdot lately over outsourcing by private companies: if I were a US taxpayer, I'd be glad that at least the government has rules against doing this! Of course, Theo and co could probably have avoided the whole problem by being employed in the US by UPenn...

Re:Empowerment for All

They never have and are unlikely to start now.

This should suprise no one. Every large organization is like that. Note the following old, well worn fable.

In the beginning was the plan,
and then the specification;
And the plan was without form,
and the specification was void.

And darkness
was on the faces of the implementors thereof;
And they spake unto their leader,
saying:
"It is a crock of shit,
and smells as of a sewer."

And the leader took pity on them,
and spoke to the project leader:
"It is a crock of excrement,
and none may abide the odor thereof."

And the project leader
spake unto his section head, saying:
"It is a container of excrement,
and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."

The section head then hurried to his department manager,
and informed him thus:
"It is a vessel of fertilizer,
and none may abide its strength."

The department manager carried these words
to his general manager,
and spoke unto him
saying:
"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants,
and it is very strong."

And so it was that the general manager rejoiced
and delivered the good news unto the Vice President.
"It promoteth growth,
and it is very powerful."

The Vice President rushed to the President's side,
and joyously exclaimed:
"This powerful new software product
will promote the growth of the company!"

And the President looked upon the product,
and saw that it was very good.

After the subsequent disaster, the suits protect themselves
by saying "I was misinformed!", and the implementors are
demoted or fired.

It doesn't matter what you're building, whether software, hardware, ariplanes, buildings, or cheezey poof poofing machines.

Re:Empowerment for All

It's not like these terrorist states couldn't pirate commercial software.

Re:Empowerment for All

The telephone, planes, cars all empower terrorists. We should ban these technologies too. Come to think of it words empower terrorists. Ban 'em.

Re:Empowerment for All

Come to think of it words empower terrorists. Ban 'em.

Yes! And we'll replace them with a new language, which we'll call...Newspeak.

Re:Empowerment for All

And empowerment of all will begin to attack the real roots of terrorism: Ignorance, poverty, extremisim, ...

Exactly!

Exactly! You can't fight lack of education and desperation with guns and bombs, unless you plan on committing genocide. Try education, understanding, communication. Those are the "weapons" in a ware against terrorism. What scares me the most is my WHOLE LIFE I'll be dealing with backlash from the current administration, and my children will be suffering the damage done to education and world relations.

Re:Empowerment for All

With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your utopian view.

Increasing the education of the general populous and raising their standard of living will have little effect on stopping terrorism.

Some of the best educated people in the world have been the most terrible. Eugenics does not come from dunderheads. Chemical weapons are not created by morons.

Providing wealth is no panacea, either. John D. Rockefeller was asked once "How much is enough?" Reportedly his response was "Just a little bit more." It is the nature of man to compare himself with others, and sadly comparison is the root of discontentment.

Education and money are not problem solvers on their own.

With respect to your "extremism must be eliminated" type of approach: That view in itself is an extreme view.

The real roots of conflict within mankind are directly related to man's relationship with truth.

Absolute truth does exist, and when man's worldview and life choices contradict that, it leads to conflict within himself and with other people.

Even if a man is in sync with absolute truth in his worldview and life choices, he will be in conflict with those who reject the truth.

Conflict is inevitable in the world. The question is this: "Is your side of the conflict in sync with what is objectively true, or is it merely your opinion that you're fighting for?"

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:Empowerment for All

On the one hand, of course this empowers terrorists.

Yes but then shoes also empower terrorists.

Seriously though - what are they saying? That those naughty terrorists dont copy commercial software?

What's more likely - that terrorists are all l33t hax0rs and OSS coders or they emply more easy-to-use platforms like Windows & MacOS?

In that case, shouldn't the case be that easy to use software be blamed for terrorism thus strengthening the argument for a move to *NIX based OS's?

Re:Empowerment for All

Yes but then shoes also empower terrorists.

Having shoes empowers terrorists.
Not having shoes empowers terrorism.

PGP

But don't worry, freeware PGP is safe from terrorism because the EULA specifically says that it can not be used in contries that the US doesn't like.

if we begin to associate...

if we begin to associate terrorism with freebsd, then freebsd's popularity may begin to rub off on terrorism. to explain... as the geek population becomes more aware of this strange thing called terrorism, thanks to its new association with something geeky (ie. freebsd), the geek population will no doubt starting thinking that terrorism, like freebsd, is cool!

i'm sorry, DARPA... that's not the message you want to be putting out!

Re:if we begin to associate...

And since terrorism will never die, thanks to the US and its pals, BSD will also never die!

Netcraft was wrong!

I support terrorism...

I run Linux.

For gods sake...

By nature, terrorists obviously aren't going to obey any laws... much less SOFTWARE LICENSES. This makes Windows a FREE OS.

And with Microsoft's latest effort to try to make their OS's as "secure" as possible, shouldn't all these people picking on opensource be targeting Microsoft as well, since they are now SECURE?

All this post-9/11 paranoia is getting really ridiculous, and I can't wait till someone in power finally realizes how stupid we are being.

Re:For gods sake...

By nature, terrorists obviously aren't going to obey any laws... much less SOFTWARE LICENSES. This makes Windows a FREE OS.

It's not about use - obviously no one can stop that, it's about them having free information available to them. Source code is handy stuff!

And with Microsoft's latest effort to try to make their OS's as "secure" as possible, shouldn't all these people picking on opensource be targeting Microsoft as well, since they are now SECURE?

You definitely missed the point.

All this post-9/11 paranoia is getting really ridiculous, and I can't wait till someone in power finally realizes how stupid we are being.

I couldn't agree more, except for the fact that in america, the masses are in power. You may disagree, and you would be right - but it's only because they have waived their power. No one votes, no one gives a shit. The few people that are left tend to be weirdos or worse alot of the time.

For example, my high school foods teacher. She wasn't all that great of a teacher, in fact she was pretty dumb. Not a bright lady. Not all that nice either - although not a complete bitch. Well, a couple years later I see that she ran for state representative and won. WTF? Nothing short of amazing.

Re:For gods sake...

I couldn't agree more, except for the fact that in america, the masses are in power.

The masses are being manipulated by the power. Our beloved U.S. government has been keeping the fear of terr'rism alive in order to manipulate the masses by cowing them into the position of "standing behind the commander in chief".

Days after the end of the Iraq War, the terr'rism alert level was dropped. As if... As if Saddam Hussein had anything to do with Al Quaida, as if the war hadn't sparked more anti-American resentment in the Arab world, resentment that could obviously lead to more terr'rism...

Total, cynical manipulation of the deep fears of the masses. And now other people, ie. advocates of proprietary software, are trying to see for how much they can milk fear of terr'rism for their own interests. Just like the oil companies use the issues to convince us that they need to drill in the Arctic Wilderness. Pretty soon we will hear that imposing mileage restrictions on SUVs would encourage terr'rism.

This is all sickening.

Real target is developed nations (2nd try)

By nature, terrorists obviously aren't going to obey any laws... much less SOFTWARE LICENSES. This makes Windows a FREE OS.

Oops hit submit too early. Let's try that again.

Timothy is chipping in with his 2 cents for the Microsoft marketing drive starting tomorrow, Thursday. I really wish there were a way to block both the ads and the shills/astroturfers.

The high level of security potentially available from using OpenBSD has been named as a worry. A number of posts have mentioned the nebulus terrorist threat [wsu.edu] and touched on the effects of lobbying. When you take into account lobbying from software companies, then the other real targets are nation states like Germany.

If Germany goes with Linux, BSD, or one of the other Free or Open Source operating systems, then they remain beholden to neither Microsoft nor the White House.

• *BSD / GPL licenses ensure freedom in how the systems are used and deployed
• Security + source code audits ensure that data and systems are less vulnerable to foreign control / monitoring.
• Development money spent on F/OSS drives the local economy.

If, on the other hand, F/OSS is blocked [infoworld.com] then they suffer not only financial punishment for the recent UN Security Council issues but also stay on a short leash:

• WPA ensures that MS/Bush can pull the plug
• DRM + EUCD + proprietary file formats keeps them on the leash
• Weak security and possible backdoors ensures that any resistance can be countered/monitored electronically.

Why Bother?

Wouldn't terrorist organizations by their vary nature ignore the laws which would prevent them from pirating closed source software? And while a BSD variant will generally be more secure, i'm sure that security doesn't pose much of a threat to the intelligence gather organizations of the US.

This is getting crazy..

Honestly this is starting to get out of hand. I really don't mean this in a 'bashing' way, but the United States really needs to take a step back and look at what the hell it is doing to itself.

This 'Homeland Security' and ferocious anti-terrorism behaviour is getting seriously out of hand.. its an enormous overreaction and its starting to make the USA look very very silly.

I totally appreciate that the threat of terrorism is real, and I believe that we must take measures to protect ourselves.. but offending and mistreating people of other countries & backgrounds is not the way to do it.

Re:This is getting crazy..

Don't confuse the United States with the right wing and criminal clique that have taken power. But I don't mean to excuse the US in this way, and I certainly don't want that to make you feel more calm about what's going on...

This 'Homeland Security' and ferocious anti-terrorism behaviour is getting seriously out of hand.. its an enormous overreaction and its starting to make the USA look very very silly.

Silly? Oh, they'd like you to think that. They hide behind what seems like absurdity, when in fact it's just their disingenuous justifications that are absurd -- their actual actions are calculated and devious, their intentions sinister.

Things make much more sense when you realize that their intention is not to ensure security. Their intention is to dominate the world.

Free Software is antithetical to domination, so of course they would reject it.

Re:This is getting crazy..

Well, you can't actually blame the american people for GWB, seeing as they didn't actually vote for him.

Still, enough people did vote for him to give the US Supreme Court the opportunity to appoint him. That's depressing enough.

anyway, getting back to the original point:

1. Open Source may give rogue nations/organisations access to technology they may not otherwise have had.

2. Conversely, this also gives enforcement authorities a baseline to work from. It's not like they're playing with a blindfold on.

More genrally, I'd like to comment on the tone of some of the posts here and some of the points they raise:

1. Being British, I have to ask myself why the Arab world hates 'us' (i.e the US and UK) as much as they appear to. Humans are not entirely rational I know, but is it unreasonable to assume that this antipathy is nothing to do with anything we may have done or said.

2. Steadfastly insisting that the "war" in Iraq was not based on religion and then having GWB use the word "crusade" is either a Freudian slip or boneheadedly stupid. I can't decide which.

3. This war is only partly about oil. In the longer term, this operation has been all about exercising power,influence and control in the middle East (this may make a middle-east peace plan easier to force through in the longer term). Imposing "democracy" on Iraq may not be a good long term aim, especailly becasue eastern philosphies are not as individualistic as those of the West Ouer notions of democaracy may not be compatible with the indigenous culture. We may see the rise of fundamentalist governments. This may be the will of the people, but could the US stomach this. If not, is it hypocrisy?

4. As evil as Saddam is, you have to be hard-headed and look at the situation. An Iraq with Saddam in control was a known quantity and the middle east was in some kind of dynamic equlibrium. UN weapons inspectors were finding weapons difficult to locate. This makes it resonable to assuime they would be difficult to deploy also. Saddam is not a madman - he is a pragmatist, which is why he was in control for so long in Iraq. Such a man has a keenly deveoped skill of self-preservation. In order to maintain position, the threat of even possibly possessing weapons is powerful in iteslf, even if no such weapons exist. Cloaking the whole thing in secrecy makes it even harder to tell what's going on.

5. Certain elements in the US administration have been pushing for action of this type for a long time. September 11 gave those people the excuse to push their agenda (I'm speaking partiucularly here about Cheney and Rumsfeld - who I believe is the major threat to any knid of peace), even when the evidence didn't point to a connection. Look at the knots they tied themselves in trying to connect Saddam and Osama. Unsuccessfully, it turned out. The longer it went on, the more desperate it looked.

6. In the long term I believe this war has done US interests a great deal of harm. There is now a major barrier between the US and Europe. The UK is trapped right in the middle and however much bridge-builidng goes on I believe a rubicon has been crossed and that this rift may be a partingf of the ways. Europe is now a major power block in its own right - it's only a matter of time before some one says, "Who needs America?". BBritain will then have a tough decision to make, because I don't think it can keep a foot in both camps.

   The Arab world is now even more distrustful of the US and its aims. The veiled threats against Syria havbe only helped to make that more obvious.

   The only thing this "war" has done is to make the world a more dangerous and paranoid place. The US's influence is indeed imperialism of a sort. The British know all about imperialism and the trouble it can cause you...

blaming a hammer

yes a hammer can
build a terrorist building
it can build a church
or a hospital too

are we to stop selling hammers
to weed out terrorism?

FreeBSD + Linux = Evil Axis of Open Source?

Incredulous!

This is comparable to our brand-spanking new Department of Homeland Security calling Wireless Networks a "terrorist technology".

Personally, I'd rather have open source software running on all important computers - that way we can check to make sure that things are done right, rather than have to trust in proprietary source code churned out by the monkeys at MS. I feel more threatened by the unknown than by the free.

I subscribe to a belief expressed best by Benjamin Franklin:
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security".

Put these in the right order

Horse

Cart

If nation-states are planing terrorist activities, it has already been shown that they do not need free operating systems or software to execute its plans.

A terrorist group will perform it's act regardless of OS.

CJC