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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. The French by Shanep · · Score: 0, Redundant

    will probably kick it's citizens arses for so much as rot13'ing their emails.

    --
    War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
  2. No, it isn't by nestler · · Score: 2, Redundant
    As long as it follows published encryption algorithms, that's all that matters. After all, if it doesn't follow the standard, then it's kind of hard to decrypt it.

    This is so wrong that I don't even know where to start.

    The program can use published algorithms everywhere, but if it RSA encrypts your message in the FBI's public key, and mails it to them (as well as encrypting as it should be and mailing to your friend), then it isn't exactly a secure email program. The only way to know if the program is doing stuff like this is to READ THE SOURCE.

    To trust that a security-related program does not have a back door, you need the source. Period.*

    *You could try to watch outgoing network connections, but this is a hack as you may not be able to figure out what it is sending since it could be encrypted. Having the source is a much more reliable method of spotting back doors.