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European Commission Recommends OSS to Fight Echelon

Posted by michael on from the gnugp dept.

CrossRhythm writes: "The European Commission Resolution on Echelon encourages the Commission and Member States "to promote software projects whose source text is made public", to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the "least reliable" category," and "systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm"."

2 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. what about MS "Shared Source"? by room101 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I may be wrong, but it sounds like MS' totally bogus "shared source" will move MS from "least reliable" to something better.

    The article is pretty long, so perhaps I missed something....

    --
    room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
    (they always break you eventually)
  2. This answers another question by rjamestaylor · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This answers another question, "Why did the Bush administration stop the MSFT breakup?". The US needs a US-based OS monopoly to insert APIs like NSA_key, FBI_tap, Jenna_beer, etc.

    With European governments wise to Echelon and MSFT's complicity with the US requests to make certain back doors...it would not be in the US's best interest to speed adoption of OSS software by breaking MSFT's stranglehold on competition.

    While I'm stretching a bit, I don't doubt this is inline with the thinking in Washington (or would that be Virginia?).

    --
    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello