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As betterunixthanunix says above, we've already seen the abject failure of the Clipper chip in the US. In the UK they tried to pass a "key escrow" bill which would have made it illegal to send anything encrypted without lodging a copy of the key with the government first. Campaigning got this bill defeated several times, and so instead we got RIPA which means law enforcement can oblige you to hand over decryption keys (or you go straight to jail).

Huge amount of material here:
http://www.fipr.org/rip/

Phillip.

There's been a lot of analysis of the legal implications by people a lot more qualified than I - see e.g. the Foundation for Internet Policy Research analysis, Dr. Richard Clayton's analysis, or the deconstruction of Phorm's own spin at Is Webwise Legal?. At the very least, there are plausible arguments for fraud and computer misuse (the forged cookies that claim to be from the sites you visit, but are inserted by Phorm) and copyright infringement (commercial exploitation of copyrighted content - not by inserting ads into sites that aren't signed up to Phorm, but by scraping those sites and converting them into advertising profiles, regardless of the site's copyright license / usage terms). Note that most of the data protection issues are generally covered by the modified terms and conditions that BT get you to sign up to when you 'opt-in' to Phorm. Note further that those terms and conditions can be accepted by anyone in your home, so your kids could sign you up without you realising - and BT are attempting to make that your problem.

Illegality seems likely- an interesting development (courtesy of El Reg):

http://www.fipr.org/080317icoletter.html

The Foundation for Information Policy Research has recently published an open letter in which it argues that the Phorm system that many British ISPs have signed up to is illegal. I am definitely having no regrets about having emigrated from the U.K. to Denmark.

The Foundation for Information Policy Research has recently published an open letter in which it argues that the Phorm system that many British ISPs have signed up to is illegal. I am definitely having no regrets about having emigrated from the U.K. to Denmark.

So now E.U. citizens have the explicit right to make private copies for personal non-profit usage

No, that's not what this means. It means it isn't a criminal offence for them to do so; they can still be sued by the copyright holder, they just aren't going to prison for it.

Do it on a commercial scale, and you end up in prison. This is already the case in most EU countries, I think, so I'm not sure what the directive changes. The FIPR objects on the grounds that it extends criminal liability to intentional patent infringement, which certainly sounds bad to me.

In "The Second IPR Enforcement Directive -- A Threat to Competition and to Liberty" the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) describes why they oppose the directive.

Europe, where things like the IPRED2 directive are being pushed through.

I'd be disappointed if NSA ever resorted to anything so crude.

I hate to burst your bubble, but the NSA already *was* that crude, and IMHO they will be so crude again. And getting traffic data by asking carriers to hook the NSA up to billing records as they do now is crude... but not *that* crude.

You could ask yourself: "does anyone follow the same ingenuity standards when solving a math problem as when preventing people from blowing themselfs up in de subway?". (The same question works for groups that worked to prevent the Soviet union from nuking New York all together... along with the rest of the US.)

I dont think they would want to backdoor windows with a full covert channel though. They would get caught and China doesn`t trust US communication equipment anyway. (Though China must love equipment that comes with plenty of FBI and ETSI mandated "lawfull interception" functionality.) Ofcourse the US would be smart if more people cared even a tiny bit as much about who manufactures and operates their critical communications infrastructure as they do about who owns the companies that own the ports. (Not that I have anything against Israel, but lets say the 8200 branch isn`t as crude as the NSA once was.)

Maybe the NSA will have someone add an intentionally, but denyably, crappy random generator. (Kind of like the flawed stream crypto in the GSM specs.)

Read up on "the crypto wars" to see just how breathtakingly blunt the NSA is when it fights together with the FBI.

If you pick up body of secrets your disapointment might be mixed with exitement over how blunt tricks can be cool just the same. Cant crack soviets codes? sounds like a great reason to research TEMPEST and traffic analyses. Wanna know what soviet sigint people are up to? Parachute on a North Pole ice berg used as eavesdropping base after its abandoned by the Soviets... because the wheather is to dangerous.

On a good day, the NSA does what just works... on a bad day they spend billions trying to build something that just works ;-)

What you wondered about is basically correct. You can read Professor Anderson's arguments against DRM and extended detention periods at http://www.fipr.org/. They are linked from the first two entries under announcements. The article summary seems to indicate that he is in favor of key escrow. That is not true.

Of course there's the European Digital Rights-EDRI (http://www.edri.org/) which is the joint organisation for digital rights in Europe. In the UK the
* Campaign for Digital Rights-CDR (http://ukcdr.org/)
* the Foundation for Information Policy Research-FIPR (http://www.fipr.org/) and
* Greennet (http://www.gn.apc.org/)
are members. I would suggest consulting them first.

In the UK? Yes. Which is plainly absurd.

Unfortunatly The Resolution of Invesigatory Powers Act 2000 was actually passed. I hate this country sometimes. As far as I know the "log everything" part has never been implemented. For "technical reasons", i.e. it's fucking ridiculous. I can't find any mention of it more recent than this article

btw, I'm a musician too, and I support filesharing. and don't call me moron.

The point is, the rules just changed. Its not interesting what you or I could do with BT or DC++ or whatever. what I'm saying is that the technology allows EVERYONE to do it. and when BT is gone, something will replace it, ad infinitum, forever so that there is going to be a sizeable percentage of people that for the rest of time are going to "steal" your music. either you can reconcile yourself with that and make a living the old fashioned way by gigging, self-promotion (which is gruelling hard work) and actually being talented or you can whine about it. the rest of us will be working to do something about it.

Think of the last 50 years of the record industry as the dotcom boom stretched out over several decades.

I think it's all EU countries actually. We in Sweden got a more extreme version. http://www.fipr.org/copyright/guide/

For the interested readers I would like to point at the EU Copyright Directive. Should have done it in the parent comment.

I based my conclusions on the Article 5, 2.(b) (fair use, for fair compensation consider the "copyright tax" built into the price of blank CDs) and Article 5, 1.(a) (word-for-word: "a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary").

I may agree with the latter one (1.(a)) being somewhat fuzzy about the implementation. Indeed, you can interpret the description as cache or proxy, but p2p as well. Bittorent leeching matches this description perfectly.

> This sounds terrible - but I've always thought that a guy who
> couldn't see wouldn't really be able to grasp the full privacy
> implications of any aspects of government policy.

My problem with a blindman being in charge of a large government
department is that he can't possibly assess all the data necessary to
come to a competent decision - he quite literally can't see what is
going on around him!

I am yet to see any sort of article in any sort of media about whether
Blunkett is fit to be a government minister. Something that needs
serious discussion....without accusations of prejudice being bandied about.

The national ID scheme will be a waste of money and bypassed by
villains. Even by Blunkett's best estimates only 99 out of 100 people
will likely have an ID card. If you are a terrorist you are not
going to get one and if you do it will be somebody elses. That defeats
any purpose the ID scheme may have.

I recommend Dr Ross Anderson's written submission to the Home Affairs commitee as further reading.

Choice quote:

There are good reasons why the typical citizen currently has a number
of cards, keys and other access tokens. Cramming more function into a
token makes it more liable to failure, more complex to maintain, a
more attractive target for forgers, and a greater threat to privacy.

"How did this happen?"

Read any slashdot thread about ID cards, biometrics and the new passports they are trying to issue. Some of the people who post here, who really should know better because they can READ, are aplolgists for all of these techniques and technologies.

The number of times that I have read "i dont have a problem with it as long as"...that is how we have arrived at this juncture; people who should know better are apathetic, compliant or simply asleep. Then you have the morons who whip out the "Tin Hat" jibe whenever someone posts that a Totalitarian state is being built right in front of your eyes; they are also a part of the reason why these measures can be introduced without even a fight.

That question is really quite astonishing; "how we got here" is right in front of you, and has been for three years. It isnt too late to turn it all around; the "joined up government" isnt joined up yet. If you are not willing to use this place to solve the problem (and by the tone of this question, I am presuming that you DO think its a bad thing) then don't even ask; its completely infuriating.

By "use this place" I mean consistently promote the FIPR, Privacy International, No2ID and the other organizations that are trying to orgainze resistance to these measures both in USUK.

If you are not willing to do this, then accept what is being done to you and your country quietly. This should be one of the loudest places screaming against these measures, not somewhere where once in a while, we get a single stunned question.

There will be significant adverse effects on economic growth and innovation; the European Single Market will be undermined; and liberty will suffer in many ways. What I don't understand is, if they're seeing all of this in their own words (source for the italics ), then why on earth would they bring down the house of cards.

Third, the winners are a small number of large organisations (AOLTimeWarner, Bertelsmann, Microsoft, Sony, Honda, Yves Saint Laurent...) who have been able to coordinate their activities and lobby internationally Personally I think someone/somegroup should ban together and create an international ban on those corporations who are threatening the liberties, and rights of others for their own gain. It would be nice to see the geekcommunity come together via some form of petition, but sadly I could see trollers messing things up/

Anyone care to draft up a legal go to hell for the overseers, I'll glady append the signature to it.

Contact your local MEP (you have one, you know that?) explaining the problems with the US DMCA, and how the EU should avoid them in revising its own legislation . The subject is due to come up in the EU parliament again next month, so you'll be timely and on-topic.

I don't do anything illegal online (warez, stealing music, etc)

Then those in power will just have to make the things that you do illegal. It used to be legal (in my country) to talk about reverse engineering electronic devices, but it no longer is. It used to be illegal for law enforcement to place a wiretap without a warrant, but now they can place wiretaps indiscriminately since there are now no judicial checks on the system. It used to be legal in the UK to keep your encryption keys to yourself, but now if you don't reveal them to law enforcement you are commiting a crime.

Just because what you do is legal now does not mean that it will be in the future. The "You shouldn't care about giving up your rights if you are doing nothing wrong" argument is one the government often uses when taking away those rights. I am just shocked they have such a big percentage of the population believing the propaganda.

Yes, China and Iraq are excellent examples of what happens to a country when the right to bear arms is violated. Great Britain

You must not have heard of, among other things, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. How about all of those surveillance cameras all over the place? 1984 just happened a few years later than predicted.

Germany

Maybe you missed this article about how they're censoring Google.

Switzerland

Given that they issue guns to everybody (full-automatic machine guns in most cases, which are kept at home), I don't see how this strengthens your case. If anything, it's further proof that an armed society is a polite society.

and Iceland

I don't know enough about them one way or the other, so I won't comment.

are all ruled by tyrants that oppress their people.

Fear the government that fears your gun.

All of this is likely to change at the European convention on human rights -- which does have a provision guaranteeing some privacy -- is incorporated into British law

Well, if things carry on getting incorporated the way they are, the ECHR will make little or no difference, especially with regards to invasions of privacy by the state. Essentially it makes a whole raft of privacy-invading activities illegal by default, which were previously (in the UK) legal unless explicitly legislated against. However, the government is busy doing its best to side-step around that by enacting legislation that permits anyone they want to be able to bypass the convention. See FIPR and Stand for details. The most prominent relevant legislation is the RIP act, and the sneaky "statutory instruments" that allow the Home Secretary to do what he likes unless people keep their eyes peeled.

Oops forgot how to spell and forgot the link to the info on the RIP bill.

Incidently, neither the UK or the US is a particularly 'free' place, by neutral standards.

Here are some ideas and examples of letters that you could use to base the letter/faxes to your MP. However please, please do not just copy and paste significant portions of the letter into your one. This does more harm than good since then the MPs will just ignore both of them and think that you don't care about the issue enought to write your own letter.

• Kuro5hin.org article
• More examples from Kuro5hin
• The letter I sent to my MP
• Stand.org.uk
• Foundation for Information Policy Research
• The previous Slashdot article

Full credit to the European Parliament for its stand on spam, and on privacy in principle.
But also note that the same session also
went, is on the verge of going, for pre-emptive
retention of email routing and IP connection time
data for the benefit of law enforcement.

I'd be more precise, but the Register story is mysteriously unavailable. 'Zit been /.ed? Should be a briefing soon-ish at the Foundation for Information Policy Research .

Here are the details of the talk on the 25th.

As the special guest of the Foundation for Information Policy Research:

Founder of the GNU Project, and campaigner for free software which people are at liberty to copy, redistribute and change. Winner of Grace Hopper Award, Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and Takeda Award....

Software patents are patents on software ideas. A typical computer program today combines many software ideas, just as a symphony combines many musical ideas. Inevitably most of them have to be old ideas. Software patents mean that every design decision brings with it a risk of getting sued.

This event will also see the launch of the "Friends of FIPR" - this will be your chance to become a founding supporter of the UK's only effective think tank addressing Internet issues.

All are welcome!

This interview is part of an ongoing series. Join our announce-only mailing list to receive a brief email when interviews are posted to Kerneltrap.

Jeremy Andrews: A quick Google search reveals that you've already been involved in quite a few interviews. However, for the readers out there who are not familiar with you and your contributions to Linux, can you tell a little about yourself?

Alan Cox: Pretty generic on the whole - born (that bit is required anyway), school, chickenpox, German measles, mumps, lessons and somewhere down the line computers thanks to a couple of teachers interested in computing who gave up their own lunchtimes one evening a week to teach pupils who were interested. At the time the school had 3 computers and you'd get maybe 15 or 20 minute sessions, but that was way more than most. Somehow computing just soaked in, so by the time I officially did computing at school I was the owner of a ZX81 (first real mass market cheap UK computer) and already teaching the teachers.

I did the end of school exam ('O' level to UK people) in 30 minutes for a 3 hour paper and by the time I was at college (16-18) I was convinced of my own brilliance.

At the end of college before going to university I worked briefly in the game world, helping do ports of the Scott Adams games to UK machines and bits of some other games, then my own game. That taught me a certain amount about the computing and real world. The computer game business at the time was run by the people who failed to get into the music industry because they'd have to think a moment before selling their grandmother. It was also full of people who were all as good at computing and many of them rather better than I was. Worse yet, every one of them was either as convinced of their own brilliance as me, mentally unstable, or both.

Like the music industry nobody in the computer game industry made any money but mysteriously all the game company owners drove expensive cars and lived in huge houses.

University was a slightly checkered career, not on the whole due to taking other people's computers apart but because of the rather odd rules at Aberystwyth. I learned a lot there (more from my own experiments and trying to achieve things than from the course), but because of the other courses you had to pass (Physics in my case) ended up changing university to one that didn't require I could do physics but required I could do computer science.

Looking back on university I'm very glad I did it. At the time I thought management skills, software engineering, databases and even bits of maths like proof by induction were completely irrelevant. I've used all of them in my Linux work.

The whole Linux thing was really an accident - my interest was text based adventure games (the world of Colossal cave etc) and also multi user games based on that style (Essex MUD1 and so on). I got into Linux looking for a better platform to developer AberMUD on.

I ended up doing time synchronization across ethernet, a large C++ network file/project manager, and then ISDN code for Sonix and later 3COM. I then escaped to be a sysadmin at NTL, left to work at a small saner ISP (Cymru.Net) which NTL bought. At that point I escaped to Red Hat and Linux became a job.

That wasn't actually an easy decision. It probably has many people thinking "So why didn't he go to Red Hat earlier, surely they would have taken him on". I probably should have, but to turn a hobby into work always risks losing the fun factor. It was actually something I had to give a lot of thought. When it came down to working on Linux or working for a telco again however that made the decision easy.

JA: How long have you worked for Red Hat? Can you offer any reflections on them, as a company? As a distribution?

Alan Cox: I joined Red Hat properly Jan 1 2000, that was the point at which there was a Red Hat in Europe and we'd sorted all the paperwork out. It suits me well as it's very much an open source company, and has a management that believes in both open source and running a company well to make a profit. Not that we get everything right, but we try.

As a distribution I run it on most my boxes. The software I always change is the usual "religious warfare" stuff - removing sendmail for exim for example.

JA: You mentioned earlier a game that you wrote. What was the game called? Is it still available anywhere?

Alan Cox: It was called Blizzard Pass. The ZX spectrum 128 version of it was released with a Spectrum 128K launch pack, then by Tynesoft as part of a two game pair. The rights to the Spectrum 128K version and the game interpreter it uses are still owned by Adventuresoft UK and/or Tynesoft somewhere.

JA: Do you still play any text based games? Or other games?

Alan Cox: Single player ones yes and there are people turning out games in the yearly IF competition that are the equal of Infocom. I actually find most of the multiplayer ones extremely boring, and the quality and gameplay has not improved that I've seen in the past ten years.

MUD1, MIST, AberMUD and the like were originally designed to be very competitive games. The game play was designed so that you had to be able to figure game strategy very fast, and included large amounts of player versus player violence.

JA: Many were surprised (and disappointed) when you announced that you were not interested in maintaining the 2.4 kernel tree. What caused you to make this decision?

Alan Cox: A variety of things were involved in that decision. In part I want to work on other projects and ideas. I've already been using some of the time freed up to rewrite the aacraid driver and to clean up some of the very old and grungy SCSI drivers instead.

It's also good that a system doesn't settle down with a sort of elite who created it and that new ideas and younger people are always stepping into the project. I want to be sure that when I'm an old fart there are plenty of people in the community with both the knowledge and the standing to call me an idiot when I say something stupid, rather than treat my words as gospel.

Some of the attitudes people had after the decision were annoying. The vision most people have of Brazil is bizarre. Its not the third world that people seem to think. Yes it has its problems, but it is one of the ten largest economies in the world, and overall it has lower crime rates than the UK or USA. Its a source of huge amounts of innovation and many great projects - including things like Window Maker, and apt for RPM.

JA: Speaking of Window Maker, what desktop environment do you use?

Alan Cox: That varies. Of choice I generally run xfce but I am frequently running the Gnome + nautilus set up and occasionally KDE because plenty of time is spent beta testing new releases. The only good way to beta test a new release is to run it.

JA: Marcelo Tosatti is now maintaining the 2.4 tree. You even suggested him yourself. Why did you recommend him, above others? How do you feel he's doing so far?

Alan Cox: I sort of shadowed Marcelo the first release without telling him. His 2.4.17 looked a lot like my collection. The differences were minor and quite reasonable. I'm extremely happy with the way Marcelo is turning out kernels and also dealing with people. He got a lot of people trying to push him around at the start, and a deluge of journalists but has survived very well.

JA: The "stable" 2.4 series has had a bumpy ride, most noticeably with a complete change in the VM. How stable do you feel the current 2.4.17 release is, in comparison with the 2.2 series? Are there reasons why people may still not want to upgrade business critical servers?

Alan Cox: A prior major release is always going to be much much more stable. Many people run the 2.2 tree on critical systems because it does what they need and it has stayed up for years. There is no deliberate vendor enforced upgrade system in the free software world so people can choose older code. It's a good idea for many projects.

2.4.9-ac and 2.4.9-RH (the Red Hat errata kernel) I was pretty happy with. The 2.4.17 tree is getting there, with Ben's recent fixups and a bit more tuning I think it will turn out nicely. I'm never truly happy until the box stays up for so long that I only reboot to do a major upgrade.

JA: Where do you think this tuning most needs to occur?

Alan Cox: Thats always the problem. When you know what needs tuning the job is almost done. The lower disk throughput seems to be caused by the VM layer but at the moment I don't know for sure it isn't some of the disk scheduling changes.

JA: Linus agreed that the major changes he made to the VM in a "stable" kernel tree were ill-timed, however claiming, "I think that Alan will see the light eventually." Are you happy with the new VM?

Alan Cox: Not really. I'm seeing 20% slower performance on a lot of real world workloads and while that is likely to be a bit of tuning it should have happened in 2.5. I don't think the Andrea VM is technically superior and that the scale of change was right. Once Linus had done it however there was no point going backward. By 2.4.15/6 various bits from Rik and Marcelo and others had the tree in a state where everyone agreed that it was better to start future VM work from that point. Rik is doing a revere map based VM now which is interesting and Andrea is tuning the VM stuff he did for 2.4.

JA: You still maintain the stable 2.2 kernel, the most recent release in that series being 2.2.20. In the changelog building up to this release was a controversial tag, "Security fixes. Details censored in accordance with the US DMCA". What prompted you to censor these fixes? Was it intended as a political statement, or done out of fear of possible prosecution?

Alan Cox: It was simply a matter of following the law and avoiding liability. The fact that American citizens are forbidden by their own government from hearing, or speaking the truth turns itself into a political statement.

It's an unfortunate situation when the major Linux conference pretty much has to be in Canada because the US will not let some of the attendees even pass through their airspace, and many of the others fear to visit. I just hope that over time things will improve.

At the moment the US, UK and much of the EEC slide slowly toward a police state. Innovation is hard, and innovators are generally buried in courts by established interests. I don't want to become a citizen of the new soviet union, forbidden from watching DVD's from the outside world, from burning flags in protest, and risking jail for offending a large company. People have to get involved in fighting such things. If they do not fight, they may well be swimming to Cuba, or serving in restaurants in Mexico City while trying to avoid deportation within thirty years.

I'm working with FIPR (the foundation for information policy research) to do my bit. It's up to everyone else to do their bits too.

JA: You mention the UK moving toward a police state, as well as the US. Has the UK passed similar laws to the US DMCA, or the proposed SSSCA?

Alan Cox: The UK already has certain anti-convention laws, and the EU is implementing a common set at the moment. In some ways it is a lot saner than the DMCA (eg its a lot more explicit about reverse engineering for compatibility) and it doesn't seek to censor people in quite the same way. Nevertheless it has many of the same effects as the DMCA such as getting people arrested for helping the disabled read e-books.

Could Sklyarov have happened in the UK. I think the answer is yes but as a civil case. Regardless of what the law says large companies can always play the system against the little guy.

JA: Since the events that occurred on September 11'th, here in the US it has been increasingly difficult to reason with people about the need to preserve our freedom and privacy. Since that time, there's been a fury of attempted legislation that seems to, as you say, move us toward a police state. Can you offer any ideas for ways we, ordinary people, can help prevent this from happening?

Alan Cox: Keep reminding people they live in a police state ?

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

On the whole for the US, I'm not the one to answer that. It is a different system and society. We have real trouble even telling the two US parties apart.

JA: Back to Linux, at what point, if any, will you stop maintaining the 2.2 kernel?

Alan Cox: I guess when nobody is using it. It takes a lot less effort to just keep a very stable tree ticking along. There are still people intentionally shipping 2.0 based products even today.

JA: Do you foresee maintaining a stable 2.6-ac branch, when the 2.6 stable tree is started?

Alan Cox: I haven't thought that far ahead.

JA: Does 2.5 development get much of your focus?

Alan Cox: Right now basically none. I was pondering collecting together driver and other stuff to feed on to Linus as he worked on the bio but Dave Jones has already started doing a good job on that.

JA: A lot of kernel hackers greatly admire you and your Linux efforts. You certainly have an amazing ability to organize and create stable kernels. For example, during the unstable period of 2.4, your -ac series proved to be quite solid on all my servers, as reported by many. In regards to your own accomplishments, what do you most take pride in?

Alan Cox: The 2.4-ac tree turned out very well. It was never something I set out to make a big thing but it ended up being used as the base for most 2.4 vendor released kernels. That was a big thing, not just for the code quality, but also because it showed everyone is still working together. 2.4-ac was built out of patches from many places, and I think almost every vendor, put together by someone at Red Hat and in various variant forms shipped by many other companies.

Probably the greatest thing has been seeing all that Linux has made possible around the world, many of which with proprietary licenses charged in US currency simply could not have happened. Being able to say "have a copy, have as many copies as you want, make changes, localize it, build an entire local computing industry" to anyone in the developing world is something very special. Even in the developed world its created so many great things, like the LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) putting Linux in schools that simply could not have afforded to do it any other way.

I always like to say "_Em_powered by Linux".

JA: You released 2.4.18pre3-ac1 last Sunday (1/13), the first since 2.4.13-ac8 in early November. What prompted this release? Do you intend to actively release the -ac kernel patches again?

Alan Cox: People kept bugging me. It's a mix of the stuff I actually run here and a trawl of the stuff that I had piled up during the change over - I found a lot more than I expected that was in my pile that was before Marcelo took over and escaped merging. Most of it is stuff I need to send on - so its not like the huge -ac patches of old, just some handy bits.

I'll probably stick out an ac2 soon as well.

JA: The 2.2 tree is quite solid, and hence few changes are made. Your -ac series is no longer the huge patch "of old". What do you do with all this reclaimed time?

Alan Cox: Sleep.

Some of it is being spent doing drivers, other bits working on new things and some is beginning to get spent on projects big Red Hat customers need and which will benefit Linux as a whole.

JA: Do you use Linux exclusively, or do you use other operating systems as well?

Alan Cox: I run Linux on pretty much everything except the microwave and washing machine. Those are tempting targets but would probably make Telsa extremely cross.

JA: Do you have any predictions as to the future of Linux?

Alan Cox: For the next five years I guess (and its definitely a guess)

• Linux in TV sets/set top boxes becoming much more common
• More consolidation
• A lot of work on clustering and fault tolerant Linux
• Limited desktop penetration, at least until some lawmaker or civil litigants have the guts to get a just settlement out of Microsoft.
• People figuring out which software models work best and where
• Vastly more software development moving from the EU and USA to Eastern Europe, Brazil and the like, both in Linux companies and outside.
• Just possibly IBM becoming a Linux vendor proper perhaps by buying out the rest of SuSE.
• Possibly Linus becoming directly paid to work on Linux, perhaps via OSDL or a standards group so he isn't "owned" by a vendor - should transmeta die.

(I figure lots of predictions is best. People will forget the ones I get wrong and marvel over the rest)

JA: Do you consider Linus a friend?

Alan Cox: Business associate perhaps. We are very different people. Linus is terribly reserved, quiet and neat. I'm none of those and don't intend to be. Live fast, die old, and make very sure everyone knows you were there.

JA: What do you enjoy doing in your non-Linux time?

Alan Cox: New things. Cooking is fun, gardening has been less of a success, although I do enjoy grinning manically at passing people while waving an axe around attempting to kill off unwanted plant life.

JA: That's a humorous image, you waving an axe and grinning manically. What have you been trying to grow?

Alan Cox: Actually it's mostly been trying to stop things growing and pruning them. In particular a small tree that was too close to the house and which refuses to actually die off when it is chopped down. The plants I have at the moment are growing quite well enough without assistance.

JA: As for cooking, what types of food do you like to prepare?

Alan Cox: Mostly Chinese style stuff. Actually I guess the right phrase is "British Chinese restaurant style food". Telsa is actually the better cook although she will never admit it.

JA: How did you meet Telsa?

Alan Cox: She lived in the same house in Aberystwyth as an old friend, so we first met that way. Lucky co-incidences.

JA: Have you and Telsa played the 'U.S, Patent Number 1' board game she bought you for Christmas yet?

Alan Cox: Not yet. Building a time machine (the goal of the game) would be useful but I'd personally not use it to get patent #1 but to take the proposers of the patent system forward to today so they can go back home and figure out how to invent it in a way big business cannot corrupt and abuse.

JA: Do you have any advice to offer people just getting started with kernel hacking?

Alan Cox: Ignore everyone who tells you kernel hacking is hard, special or different. It's a large program, and bug fixing or driver tweaking can be a best starting point. It is however not magic, nor written in a secret language that only deep initiates with beards can read.

Play with it, try things, break it horribly and enjoy yourself. I started on the networking code because it didn't work very well. Everything I knew about TCP/IP I had downloaded the same day I started hacking the net code. My first attempts were not pretty but it was *fun*.

JA: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Alan Cox: Another zero to the end of the average Linux uptime, Ralph Nader to the list of US presidents and some semblance of real democracy to UK and EU government.

JA: Thank you very much for the time you've put into this interview, and much more for all the amazing effort you've put into Linux. You have done a lot to help bring us where we are.

If you are in the UK, check out Foundation for Information Policy Research
and Campaign for Digital Rights

Other than that, small groups are scattered here and there around Europe. If a group doesn't exist in your country - do something about it. :)

Indeed we (members of the UK Campaign for Digital Rights) have, in some depth. Unfortunately, all the exclusions you refer to are optional, and need not be implemented by the various member states. It is to be expected that the EU governments will come under the same lobbying pressure from the Recording and publishing industries that the US Government did with the DMCA (which also contains what look like exclusions for academic research, etc, which are rendered almost entirely ineffective in practise by means of some cunning legal tricks).

There is evidence for the same legal trickery already in the EU directive - the exemptions allow you to make use of a circumvention mechanism for the non-infringing purposes you'd expect, but do not exempt anyone from prosecution/lawsuits should they create one.

Alan Cox is indeed extremely concerned about the EUCD, and you should not be at all surprised if you find him, in the not too distance future, speaking about the EUCD in terms far from glowing, at conferences aimed at the European software industry. I would recommend you read some of the resources at: www.eurorights.org (our parent site) before leaping to your own conclusions about how inoffensive the EUCD might be.

(See the summary of one of our recent IRC meetings - unexpurgated transcripts are linked therefrom - for further evidence that Alan Cox is taking the threat of the EUCD very seriously indeed).

See also the articles linked from the CDR's EUCD links page (apologies for getting this link wrong in my earlier post to this thread).

Expect also to see a lot more from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org) on European Copyright Legislation over the next month or two.

If implemented with some revisions, and all the exemptions in full force, the EUCD would be considerably less threatening to musicians, the Free Software Movement, academics, and others than the DMCA. However, at present, we could very easily find ourselves (in Europe) faced with cases similar to Sklyarov's, Felten's, and the DeCSS case if the EUCD is allowed to be pushed through without substantial lobbying to counter that of the Recording and Publishing Industries. I see no evidence whatever (DMCA, SSSCA, FTAA's DMCA-alike - see www.eff.org) that the recording and publishing industries are to be trusted not to seek to turn the EUCD into a carbon-copy of the DMCA when it comes before the legislature of the EU member states.

Julian T. J. Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that England has instituted the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP). This piece of legislation gave the British government the wholesale right to monitor all electronic communications in Britain and the EU. They can't legally monitor your phonecalls without a warrant, but they can monitor all your internet activity.

With internet enabled park benches, Microsoft and the British government are gearing up to obsolete the telephone in Britain. After all, who would bother making phone calls when they have free internet access at every park bench?

It's a win-win situation. Microsoft expands their monolopy, while the British government tightens its iron grip on its subjects.

While there is a certain rah-rah for technology aspect to this story, we must not forget the issues of corporate power involved here. Personally, I'm ok with the UK government doing whatever it needs to reduce crime. I'm most vehemently opposed to Microsoft's involvement. Microsoft is getting cocky now that Bush is in office. I just hope it doesn't get to the point where Microsoft has totally coopted the power of the world's democratic governments and turned us all into its consumerist slaves.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.

In the UK, Newham council estate have 144 CCTV cameras linked to face recognition. This is in turn linked to a database of a police supplied 'watch-list' so that they can be tracked as they walk around. You worry about being spied upon when walking into a Superbowl game? Soon we won't be able to walk around our own neighbourhood without the Government knowing exactly where we are at all times. And all this without putting GPS into our mobile phones and our cars.

No hiding online either. UK ISPs are going to have to store 7 years of traffic, and the Government already have state access to decryption keys. Our current government has been working for years to turn the United Kingdom into one of the most oppressive Big Brother states :-(

Phillip.

Did a search on google, and found these three:

Comments on Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory ...

Letter to the House Of Lords on the Regulation of ...

Ways to Defeat the Snooping Provisions in the Regulation of ...

The last one covers (among other things) steganography and is quite interesting.

I'm currently working in NY. This is my first time in the US, I live in London. The atitude to the Web and what people to should be allowed to view is a lot more relexed then here (the RIP bill being the exception - it won't make it through parliment anyway). Something else I noticed about the US is marketing - to this outsiders eyes it seems to be everywhere and I mean *everywhere*. The current topic just shows what your Congress originally intended for good has being turned into a cynical drive by coperations to sell more and more and more and more.... P.S It also displays the utter studpidity of coperations - do you think most kids give a fuck about ads? These guys are *muppets* so don't worry about it - ignore it :-)

RIP authorizes employers to monitor employee emails, yes, but the scope of the bill goes far beyond snooping on dimwitted employees who haven't the sense to use discretion on the job.

This is from the Guardian Unlimited
(links, info on http://www.fipr.org/rip/index.html)

"...The RIP bill will make the UK the sole G8 economy to allow state access to decryption keys....."

So those suggesting PGP are SOL.

In addition, RIP

"...allows for the interception, surveillance and disclosure of journalistic material without prior judicial authorisation. As it stands, a source may be identified and compromised or action taken to prevent the flow of information without a newspaper even being aware of it, still less being able to challenge any applications for authorisation....."

As for the RIP act in my own country. I'm nothing short of appalled. I've written to my member of parliament but to no avail - didn't even acknowledge me.

I thought MPs had to reply to letters sent them by their constituents.

By the way, check out www.stand.org.uk and www.fipr.org

D.

For those residing in the UK, please have a look at FIPR RIP Information Centre for a load of interesting article on RIP from British publications. Of particular interest is the RIP Counter Measures! Read and follow!

AC

For those residing in the UK, please have a look at FIPR RIP Information Centre for a load of interesting article on RIP from British publications. Of particular interest is the RIP Counter Measures! Read and follow!

AC

Full info is on the FIPR site: http://www.fipr.org/rip/

Regret for the past,
Is a waste of spirit

Another useful site is http://www.fipr.org/rip/RIPcountermeas ures.htm . No explainations required.

wrighty.

(Is it me or does the lameness filter add in spaces to long strings?)

FIPR has a rather nice article on how you can protect yourself. The article is aimed against RIP, the draconian UK legislation that is currently winding it's way through parliament, but it is genrally useful.

It is a well written, balanced, and informative article, with useful pointers to resources on the internet.

The two mail services that offer encrypted e-mail are probably worth mentioning explicitly:

• http://www.messagerx.com
• http://www.mail2web.com

The article concludes:

The technical thinking behind the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill is inept. Criminals can easily circumvent the measures envisaged and the ways in which they are likely to react will actually pose much more serious problems for UK law enforcement authorities than the problems the legislation is intended to solve. At the same time the measures will damage confidence in cryptography and this will be detrimental to the privacy, safety and security interests of honest individuals and businesses and to the UK's aspirations in e-commerce.

---

"Where do you come from?"

FIPR has a rather nice article on how you can protect yourself. The article is aimed against RIP, the draconian UK legislation that is currently winding it's way through parliament, but it is genrally useful.

It is a well written, balanced, and informative article, with useful pointers to resources on the internet.

The two mail services that offer encrypted e-mail are probably worth mentioning explicitly:

• http://www.messagerx.com
• http://www.mail2web.com

The article concludes:

The technical thinking behind the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill is inept. Criminals can easily circumvent the measures envisaged and the ways in which they are likely to react will actually pose much more serious problems for UK law enforcement authorities than the problems the legislation is intended to solve. At the same time the measures will damage confidence in cryptography and this will be detrimental to the privacy, safety and security interests of honest individuals and businesses and to the UK's aspirations in e-commerce.

---

"Where do you come from?"

I don't see why the FBI can't continue to simply tap the phone lines...

That's more or less what the United Kingdom is suggesting. The FBI approach seems to be much less invasive.

The problem is that except for my pathetic dial-up line, most internet traffic goes on dedicated data lines, not over the public standard telephone network (PSTN). Sure, they can tap the telephone switches and have equipment in place to do this, but they do not have similar equipment in all the data networks.

Telephone networks are increasingly becoming obsolete by IP telephones and IP switching equipment. This is likely to worry FBI, and I guess that in all fairness it should (America did approve of telephony tapping). I don't know what the right answers are...

---

"Where do you come from?"

And if you encrypt your data, you will have to supply the decryption keys on demand, or face up to two years in jail. If you even tell some-one their internet usage is being (or has been) intercepted, you can face jail too.

One of the best sources of info for those interested is here.

It is beholden on noble Lords who are using the lobbying material and literature of that organisation to understand where it and its supporters are coming from. They do not want the technology to be available to all or for it to be safe. They would like to have the regime which exists in America, which is protected by the First Amendment and which has no constraints at all.

I do not want the industry to grow in this country under that regime because, in America, children are kidnapped. In America, there is no restriction on the paedophile activity which can take place. In America, there is no restriction on the Nazi propaganda, bomb-making and all the other things that can take place on the Internet because the authorities in America are hamstrung by the regime under which they work. I do not want the Internet in the rest of the world to operate under that regime. This country must take a lead in ensuring that that is not the case.

The First Amendment is not perfect, but statements like that should remind those of us in the U.S. to be thankful for what we have.

In the UK, the government will get there first.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act will treat ISPs as telcos. It will require them to put the monitoring apparatus in place, so the government can watch what its taxpayers are doing. More detailed discussion of this hideous legislation can be found at the STAND site.

Once the telcos, sorry, ISPs put this apparatus in place, thy might as well get some return on their 'investment' by gleaning marketing info about their customers in passing.

This is such old news! Patricia Hewitt got ambushed at the 'Scrambling for Safety 3.5' event back in September by Nicholas Bohm of the Law Society. She'd just announced that the Govt. was dropping mandatory key escrow from the Bill, and was expecting a round of applause or something, when Bohm hit her with this. Absolutely hilarious, it was. Almost as good as that woman from the Post Office who nearly had a kitten when that bloke asked why she was talking about privacy when their website had been wide open to hackers... Fucking hilarious! :-)

D.
..is for Doh!