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The article claims that the only way to prevent governments from tracking its citizens online is to use open source software? How? it doesn’t say.
When servers are doing all the tracking, it doesn’t matter what kind of software it is. Nothing in FOSS prevents it from being used maliciously.
China’s “great firewall” could be 100% Linux servers. Many FOSS advocates have claimed that China loves Linux and open source, after all.
Comments
Do these worthless homunculi give to Amnesty International or Muman Rights Watch? Do they give to the ACLU?
No, they probably do not. I’m beginning to hate the paranoid idiots with an (unusual for me) passionate intensity.
Why can’t they just whine about how the world isn’t fair to them and codez should be free? That’s stupid but acceptable. For permanent adolescents.
This waving of bogus philosophical banners is beginning to get to me. If I see Holwerda any time soon, he’s due a couple of whacks upside the head with the collected works of Thomas Jefferson — and the collected works of Thomas Jefferson are not a whack to be taken lightly, let me tell you.
Have these morons never heard of the Supreme Court? I’ll grant that it was hopelessly spineless in the case of Gitmo, but I would be genuinely shocked if it didn’t react with extreme prejudice (as it were) to indefinite detention of US Citizens.
Oh, and I note that Thom was giddily indifferent to the potential indefinite detention of Goldrun Furrners under various oppressive legislation since Sept 11th.
GRAAAGHHH!
Oh well, back on topic. So FOSS would solve all this, would it?
Quite the reverse, I would suspect.
Take Stuxnet, for example. The Loons are up in arms about the (relatively trivial and fixable) M$ exploitation hole that allowed Stuxnet to be delivered. (Well, I say “relatively trivial,” but I looked at the dozen or so steps involved and as an ex-security man my eyes started to water.)
The point, of course, is that it was activated on an industrial system (Siemens, and I’m not criticising them) whose distribution was small-scale and specialised enough that the actual, damaging, government software (and in the case of Stuxnet I’m personally convinced it was a, if not the, government) went un-noticed until it had done its job.
Ring any bells? Given Linux’ lamentable track-record in fixing security holes over the last five years or more, I would personally trust Microsoft far more than I would would trust Loon software.
I mean, it’s not a proven problem in the first place, but Holwerda’s proposed non-solution is brain damage of the highest water.
I do rather like his comment about hearing aids, though. Apparently, it’s no longer the voices behind the fridge you need to be concerned about…
The thing about Linux security is that it’s treated with ignorance. They revert back to being the “stupid users” that RMS complains about. People who use Linux simply can’t believe their OS could be compromised, so exploits pretty much have free reign if they make it in the wild.
What, this again? Here, read this, from post 60 onwards:
http://omgcheesecake.net/index.php?/topic/1247-osnews-fail-thread/page__view__findpost__p__24342
First – Thom is either a goddamn hippie or the biggest troll ever. I personally think that he has been eating too much of the famous dutch gandja cakes.
Second – how many of you have ever checked an open source program for tracking pieces of code.
Third – how is gonna FOSS prevent anything and what has this to do with SOPA and NDAA
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