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Open Source And Spying
stigmatic writes: "The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), which provides maps to defense and intelligence agencies, has sponsored the project to see if a Open Source can benefit the world of spying. It sounds like a joke to some that a U.S. intelligence agency may soon rely on free software to turn complicated data from spy satellites into detailed maps. But a collaboration between the government, private industry and academia may lead to just that with OSSIM, or Open Source Software Image Map. Space.com is carrying the full article."
Jonathan Pollard was 'open-sourcing' our intelligence to the Israelis for years!
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
First of all, what is the easiest way for a country to check its agricultural production? Sat. Imagery. How can I quickly see pollution effects? Again sat. imagery. How can I see the growth of a city, again sat. imagery. We can buy old images comparitively easily now, we can even find them on the web, but they are out of date.
The point is let the boys have their toys, but there are a lot of people who would be quite interested in current slightly lower res. imagery and it would be great if we had some common tools to work with it. Of course there are military uses, but what about everyone else who wants to work with GIS?
See my journal, I write things there
If they go with COTS software, they could be held hostage by some monopolistic corporation.
If they go with GPL'ed software, they could be held hostage by some crazed open source terrorist.
If they go with homegrown software, they will be accused of having inferior skills.
The Open Source community should really look at this as affirmation. Believe it or not the intellegence community is full of brilliant people--they just aren't allowed to spout off about it.
[SCENE: Interior Gatestech Laborotories]
Gatesfinger: Ah, Mister James Bond. I see that you have applied a patch against the CVS tree for our nuclear control system.
Bond: How does the old rote go? "Security through obscurity is no security?"
[Bond types "Make" at the BASH prompt. The legion of goons behind Gatesfinger all raise their automatic weapons, but Gatesfinger raises his hand and pushes his glasses up on his nose. Bond's finger hovers threatingly above the "Enter key]
Bond: Release Dr. Greattits and I *could* just walk away without compiling this binary.
Gatesfinger: You think you have won, Mister Bond? Well, Think again.
[Gatesfinger speaks into his watch]
Gatesfinger: GOATSEX! Attack James Bond
Goatsex: ROAR!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
But picture this: All these spook applications get created in open source, then there's some kind of "security incident," the next thing you know all domestic applications of all relevant open source systems are made illegal for security reasons. The open source movement is set back decades, hackers get thrown in jail, linux proponents protest "with open source illegal only criminals will have open source!" (resulting in a nasty copyright lawsuit by the NRA). Two birds with one stone?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
At the Department of Transportation, I worked on the ETMS (Enhanced (air) Traffic Managment System), which is the system that the national airspace controlers use to figure out, e.g., if there's going to be congestion over Chicago today and re-route or delay planes to avoid it.
The system is something that has evolved over the years, and could have benefitted from a clean re-implimentation using modern tools and protocols. The problem was that they would have had to spin off a VERY large project to do so, and failures in the real-time traffic management program had made such programs political footballs.
I proposed a solution: Open Source.
Take all of the code, clean out anything that could a) be used to determine how critical systems (e.g. real-time air traffic control) worked, and there weren't many of them or b) could indicate how the security of the current system functions. Then establish a panel of 2-4 people who act as gatekeepers for the source. They release the source to the world and organize 5-10 projects around replacing the code from the ground up. No one ever took me up on it, but I think it would have resulted in one of the best government systems ever designed. Certainly your average OSS project is much better designed than any government system I've ever seen.
The gatekeepers would be responsible for code reviews on all incoming check-ins, and no one but the gatekeepers would have write-permission to the original source tree (though, you'd probably do something like sourceforge for the external developers to use as a sandbox). It's really no less secure than hiring random contractors to work on the code.